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Casey Handmer did a couple of excellent articles on this topic: - Space-based solar power is not a thing: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/20/space-based-so... -
No really, space based solar power is not a useful idea, literature review edition: https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/09/20/no-really-spac... You can get into the weeds of the detailed costings, safety, etc, but I think the clearest argument is this: > The problem with beaming power using microwaves is that the monetizable value per Watt is incredibly low, because essentially unmetered electricity comes out of the walls of every building. The trick is to increase the value per Watt, by increasing the value and decreasing the power. The value is increased by modulating the microwaves with high speed data, and the power can be reduced by a factor of a million or so without hurting this method. Indeed, customers pay only for the data, and not for the transmitted electrical power, which is pathetically low at the receiver. Communications satellites remain the killer app for the commercial space industry And then you look at the fact that almost every satellite communications company has gone bankrupt at some point. SpaceX with Starlink being a notable exception, but OneWeb which superficially looks pretty similar has already gone bankrupt once. If communications, which is many more orders of magnitude more valuable than power, is not enough to stave off bankruptcy, then there is no possibility of beamed power being economical without a commensurate improvement in the efficiency of space launch. And that's just a baseline as a necessary condition, not actually a sufficient condition for it to be a sensible business. |