Comment by bastawhiz
11 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
11 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
Sure but like, just use even more solar panels? You can probably buy a lot of them for the cost of a satellite.
The cost of putting them up there is a lot more than the cost of the cells
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.
“This scale” is not realistic in terms of demand or even capability. We may as well talk about mining Sagittarius A* for neutrons.
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And in geostationary, the planet hardly ever gets in the way. They get full sun 99.5% of the year.
Boosting to geostationary orbit knocks a big chunk out of your payload capacity. Falcon 9 expendable will do 22 tons to LEO and about 8 tons to GTO.
even at 10% (say putting it on some northen pile of snow) it is still cheaper to put it on earth than launch it
I don't disagree
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 :\