Comment by audunw
1 day ago
3. The falling costs won’t benefit space as much. The cost of sending mass to space will still be a big factor in the space solar panel costs. Much of the reason why solar is getting cheaper is not the panels themselves, but due to innovations that reduce installation costs. Those don’t apply to space (outside of the already assumed reductions in sending mass to space to make this viable)
Yes, launch cost is the crux of the matter. My skepticism is based on whether they’ll be able to get launch cost low enough and launch cadence high enough. SpaceX has shown the ability to get launch costs dramatically lower and cadence dramatically higher, but it’s not a slam dunk that those curves will continue to the levels needed for this idea to work.