https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/09/20/no-really-spac...
(from linked previous post)
"My view is that space-based solar power is impossibly expensive and will never be used on Earth."
(from linked previous post)
"My view is that space-based solar power is impossibly expensive and will never be used on Earth."
Only a couple of years max before this becomes obvious to everyone so if you have any mad schemes that rely on high energy prices then your window of opportunity to land some funding is closing.
In order to have the required extremely tiny main beams (high gain), to not instantly lose most of the power to spreading losses, LEO beamed power at reasonable microwave frequencies requires ~5km wide aperture.
We cannot build 5 km things in space yet. It is not really something worth discussing till we're doing that regularly. Space based power isn't that much more available than ground based so there's not much value added to the huge increase in cost orbit requires.
To me, this all seem to need a lot of data and some careful calculations :) .
Then, OPEC decided to demonstrate just how temporarily infeasible they could make it, by manipulating global oil prices (far from the first time).