alt Hacker NewsLet's say with no atmosphere and no night cycle, a space solar panel is 5x better. Deploying 5x as many solar panels on the ground is still going to come in way under the budget of the space equivalent.
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mike_hearn • today at 9:15 AM
That's with current launch costs, right? Nobody is claiming it's economic without another huge fall in launch costs, but that's what SpaceX is doing.
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And it's not the same at all. 5x the solar panels on the ground means 5x the power output in the day, still 0 at night. So you'd need batteries. If you add in bad weather and winter, you may need battery capacity for days, weeks or even months, shifting the cost to batteries while still relying on nuclear of fossil backups in case your battery dies or some 3/4/5-sigma weather event outside what you designed for occurs.