| ▲ | bastawhiz 6 hours ago |
| The atmosphere is in the way, and they get pretty dirty on earth. Also it doesn't rain or get cloudy in space |
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| ▲ | __alexs 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Sure but like, just use even more solar panels? You can probably buy a lot of them for the cost of a satellite. |
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| ▲ | rcxdude 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The cost of putting them up there is a lot more than the cost of the cells | |
| ▲ | schiffern 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >just use even more solar panels
I think it's because at this scale a significant limit becomes the global production capacity for solar cells, and SpaceX is in the business of cheaper satellites and launch. | | |
| ▲ | skywhopper 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | “This scale” is not realistic in terms of demand or even capability. We may as well talk about mining Sagittarius A* for neutrons. | | |
| ▲ | schiffern 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | You don't even need a particularly large scale, it's efficient resource utilization. Humanity has a finite (and too small) capacity for building solar panels. AI requires lots of power already. So the question is, do you want AI to consume X (where X is a pretty big chunk of the pie), or five times X, from that total supply? Using less PV is great, but only if the total cost ends up cheaper than installing 5X the capacity as terrestrial PV farms, along with daily smoothing batteries. SpaceX is only skating to where they predict the cost puck will be. |
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| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | DennisP 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And in geostationary, the planet hardly ever gets in the way. They get full sun 99.5% of the year. |
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| ▲ | PunchyHamster 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| even at 10% (say putting it on some northen pile of snow) it is still cheaper to put it on earth than launch it |
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| ▲ | fuzzfactor 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I'm all for efficiency, but I would think a hailstorm of space junk hits a lot harder than one of ice out on the farm. Except it doesn't melt like regular hail so when further storms come up you could end being hit by the same hail more than once :\ |
