Discussion on:

Space, solar power's next frontier?

This 40+ year old proposal would solve all of our power needs for as long as the sun lasts. 24 hour per day, non weather dependent, non polluting energy. But don't put them in geosynchronous orbits. They belong in the Lagrangian points of the moon's orbit. And the majority of the building materials are available on the moon. No need to lift them out of earths gravity well. All can be launched by catapult from the moon's surface. Take a calculator and get the size of a sphere's surface with a radius of 93 million miles. Multiply by 1 kw per sq yard. That's how much power is going to waste every minute of every day. It's raining soup out there and we aren't even holding out a spoon. Ground based solar is a joke. With that kind of power we could desalinize sea water to turn deserts into cropland without burning -any- fossil fuel. We need to get -all- the dirty, polluting, dangerous industry into orbit or onto the moon and turn the Earth into a bedroom community. We can do it if we want to and our descendants will thank us for it.

This is way past due. We should have been developing this capability in earnest for the past 40 years. Now a private corporation is going to try to do it. Good for them. I hope the founders become the richest people on, or off of, the earth.