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ericdtoday at 4:15 AM2 repliesview on HN

In space, that solar panel is always in the sunlight. No clouds, no night time. Weirdly enough, earth is a more challenging environment in some ways for solar. You need to lay out >3x the number of panels on earth to get the same power production, and you need batteries or a grid interconnection as a buffer.

Also, there's a populist backlash on building datacenters, power transmission infra, and power generation in many areas on earth. Locally, we have a number of people complaining about solar arrays going up on farmland, even though it's the farmers choosing to do it. "It's an eyesore".


Replies

dingalingtoday at 6:49 AM

> In space, that solar panel is always in the sunlight

Only in a Sun-synchronous orbit, at specific elevations. Most 'normal' orbits have periods of shade.

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dullcrisptoday at 4:26 AM

How big is it? I have some space I’m not using, no pun intended.

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