Comment by Schiendelman

The problem is, that person is deeply underinformed. For instance:

"you don't lose that much power through the atmosphere"

Assuming you can point the orbiting panels at the sun and remain direct, you lose 80% of your power through the atmosphere (from angle and day/night). On the ground you lose 25% even if your panel is directly below the sun pointed exactly at it, which is never the case in many latitudes.

And of course it's not trivial to radiate heat. But it's also a fairly simple mechanical problem. You pump the heat to spread it out, and radiate it. You've already got the surface area shaded by the panels (which is more than enough, because the panels don't absorb 100% of solar radiation).

Sure, you need a lot of them. Starship V3 is probably about to get us past 100 tons of payload capacity - even if they blow up a few first.

The key people miss is that you don't have to spend money on ongoing cooling once the thing is in space. This isn't going to save money now, but the cost lines are going to cross.