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Exactly. So lets talk about a different, important number. Watts per dollar per day. The only one your accountant/investor cares about. Its something like double or triple for space-based solar cells, if you can deploy them efficiently.


a. they have to be in space so your capital outlay is insane

b. you have massive efficiency losses in wireless power transmission


Both are VERY debatable points. capital outlay in $56 million per launch for Falcon 9. Is that more or less than buying up hundreds of square miles of urban land? Deployment/construction is also different, and perhaps very much cheaper, under zero-gravity.

As for efficiency losses, I don't know what figures you used but its essentially the same problem to receive photons on the ground from a maser in space as the original task of converting sunlight in the first place. Efficiencies there are in fact very high (re: OP).




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