How Space-Based Solar Power Plants Could Be Built By Robots On the Moon (blastingnews.com)

MarkWhittington writes: The concept of space based solar power has been around for decades. The late Gerard K. O'Neill proposed building them as a way to finance space colonies in the 1970s. Recently Popular Science reported on a modern approach to building space based solar energy stations. Instead of relying on massive, orbiting space colonies filled with construction workers to put the plants together, why not automate the entire process?

Comments

Bahahahaha

[Anonymous Coward]

Where is Solaren's 2016 installation?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Oh, not even a single bolt in orbit yet? Oh I guess it'll just magically happen in the next nine months?

These space fantasies always follow the same pattern:

1) Uncritical support from people raised on sci-fi and proficient in software, but with no knowledge of the physical sciences and engineering
2) Failure to deliver anything
3) Upping the ante to ever more ridiculous concepts

Not far fetched at all

[ickleberry]

Given that its been quite a while since someone landed anything on the moon. It would be a victory for space exploration if someone sent up a robot and dug a hole. People in the 60s would have expected a decent size lunar colony by now

capitalism filter

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

I'm sure the instant someone can make more selling electrons generated from orbit than it costs to produce them (without siphoning tax dollars off of the rest of us clods), you'll see such a business materialize, the world will be a better place, oceans will stop rising, etc.

Until then, let's continue with the research but utilize what's the most cost effective now.

Fer God's sake, fusion energy is just around the corner... :)

the economics don't work out

[ooloorie]

The economics of space based solar power make little sense. You gain maybe a factor of three in terms of energy captured, but at the cost of massive launch costs, expensive maintenance, expensive transmission systems and large ground based stations, and the risk of having what amounts to energy beam weapons in space. If you think solar energy is cost effective, just put three times as many solar panels on the ground (in the Sahara and Mojave) and you still come out ahead.

As for self-replication, that would be a neat trick to master just on earth and is probably still a long ways off; but once we do, it works just as well on Earth. Furthermore, the moon is still a fairly deep gravity well; for any kind of orbital construction, it makes much more sense to divert an asteroid into orbit and use that as the raw material for solar panels, space stations, or whatever, rather than launching from the moon.

Re: This sounds familiar

[syntheticmemory]

Sounds like solar panels on earth to me.