Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jacquesm | Hacker News Reader

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No, it's bs. Because of the double conversion you're never going to outperform solar here on earth and the cost of deployment undoes any advantage you might have had anyway. But: cool project and nice of them to get it bankrolled.

> To achieve the energy transition, you need SO MANY solar panels and they will take up a lot of land.

This isn't true.

> According to Jesse Jenkins, to power America, "the solar farms are an area the size of Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts.

The estimates are that it's anywhere from 10000 to 30000 square miles which is compared to the 3.8 million square miles of the continental USA an absolute pittance. Doing this by tightbeaming the output of an equivalent solar installation in space is ridiculous.

Agriculture is 44% of US land, PV on an area <1% is enough to power America. And this 1% can (and should) be deployed in deserts

Not to mention we can make dual use of existing land in the form of roof top solar.

The roof of every single new big box store should be covered in solar panels and we should start covering large parking lots in them too. Shaded parking that powers the area would be sweet.

Come to South Africa where the government is unable to provide reliable electricity to the country. Almost all new developments come with rooftop solar, and quite a few large parking lots in my hometown got covered with solar arrays for shade.

> Agriculture is 44% of US land, PV on an area <1% is enough to power America

There is even a potential convergence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agrivoltaics

Sure, on a per square foot basis, but the requirements and limitations are decidedly different. I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand, at least not on a 10-30 year time frame.

Not to mention you get a 30% boost in solar insolation by snagging the light before it goes through the atmosphere, plus you don't have the resistive losses due to heat building up in a land-based solar cell.

And how do you propose to move that power losslessly across your downlink? Those losses will likely be far larger than the 30% gain.

Getting rid of waste heat in space is harder than it is on earth!

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