Good questions. Robert Zubrin took a sceptical look at the same thing in his book Entering Space (STRONGLY recommended). I'm not sure which side of the line I fall; I need to reread Zubrin's take again, for one thing.
However, I think he'd agree with me on one framing issue for questions like these. Where you write "especially at our current technology levels" - be careful of this. Technological capabilities may be increasing, and/or may be increaseable. Don't hold them static by implication. One level of your question is best phrased as, "Given the expense of constructing and maintaining this in space, and inevitable transmission losses, is this something that would be economical even if Earth-to-orbit costs, etc., fall to where starting becomes a reasonable option?"
(A second level that is relevant - given that the advancement that that question assumes is not certain, would only have a constituency "once accomplished, not now", and is heavily vulnerable to budget and priority decisions - is, "Is this something that would have a sufficient payoff to be one reason to invest in lowering Earth-to-orbit costs and other basic space capacities?" But it would have to pass the other question first.)
What I think of the question for the moment: I think that the circumstances where it might be worthwhile with most certainty come with extreme/eventual-large-scale cases of implementation. It'll be very difficult for any solar panel surface in orbit to be cost-effective vs. the same solar panel surface area on Earth - except that, on the Earth's surface, beyond a certain point space restraints vs. other priorities become a problem. It's possible that we could end up putting more solar collection capability in space than we ever could on Earth. Cheap electrical power (arbitrarily cheap? just, how many collectors have we put up?) could come from this to a degree not possible from the Earth's solar income alone. It would avoid potential tight resource choices that could come from large populations that want high standards of living.
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Good questions. Robert Zubrin took a sceptical look at the same thing in his book Entering Space (STRONGLY recommended). I'm not sure which side of the line I fall; I need to reread Zubrin's take again, for one thing.
However, I think he'd agree with me on one framing issue for questions like these. Where you write "especially at our current technology levels" - be careful of this. Technological capabilities may be increasing, and/or may be increaseable. Don't hold them static by implication. One level of your question is best phrased as, "Given the expense of constructing and maintaining this in space, and inevitable transmission losses, is this something that would be economical even if Earth-to-orbit costs, etc., fall to where starting becomes a reasonable option?"
(A second level that is relevant - given that the advancement that that question assumes is not certain, would only have a constituency "once accomplished, not now", and is heavily vulnerable to budget and priority decisions - is, "Is this something that would have a sufficient payoff to be one reason to invest in lowering Earth-to-orbit costs and other basic space capacities?" But it would have to pass the other question first.)
What I think of the question for the moment: I think that the circumstances where it might be worthwhile with most certainty come with extreme/eventual-large-scale cases of implementation. It'll be very difficult for any solar panel surface in orbit to be cost-effective vs. the same solar panel surface area on Earth - except that, on the Earth's surface, beyond a certain point space restraints vs. other priorities become a problem. It's possible that we could end up putting more solar collection capability in space than we ever could on Earth. Cheap electrical power (arbitrarily cheap? just, how many collectors have we put up?) could come from this to a degree not possible from the Earth's solar income alone. It would avoid potential tight resource choices that could come from large populations that want high standards of living.