Hacker News Reader

Comment by PurpleRamen | Hacker News Reader

> A satellite in sun-synchronous orbit would have approximately 3-5X more energy generation than a terrestrial solar panel in the arctic.

Building 3-5x more solar plants in the Arctic, would still be cheaper than travelling to space. And that's ignoring that there are other, more efficient plants possible. Even just building a long powerline around the globe to fetch it from warmer regions would be cheaper.

View on HN

> Building 3-5x more solar plants in the Arctic, would still be cheaper than travelling to space.

Well first you have to make solar panels works in the polar nights, in winter they have a few minutes of sun in the day at most.

> Even just building a long powerline around the globe to fetch it from warmer regions would be cheaper.

Deserts have good sun exposure and land availability but extremely poor water resources, which is necessary for washing the sand off the panels. There are many challenges with scaling both terrestrial and orbital solar.

I wasn't thinking of going THAT far. Northern Canada/Alaska is in the arctic region, so build the line some thousand miles down to the sunny parts of Canada/USA and call it done. Not like this is particularly hard, probably not even that expensive, compared to a million satellites/future space-debris. Greenland would probably be also a good location.

Sunlight is unevenly distributed in the arctic during the year to say the least.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com