re: #137 Kewalo

Building solar panels isn’t too much of a problem, although they’re still dismally inefficient. But even assuming efficiencies improve dramatically, there’s the problem of getting them into orbit, which is horrendously expensive. Not to mention the carbon footprint of the huge number of rocket launches it would take to get them up there.

There are a lot of other problems as well, but hauling all that mass a couple hundred miles (or more) up is a real showstopper.

Over the next ten to twenty years, all sorts of things that are actually affordable and immediately workable can be done to improve the energy situation. Orbiting solar panels may have a place someday, but the cost/benefit ratio is simply too high for the moment.