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

  >just use even more solar panels

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.

You don't even need a particularly large scale, it's efficient resource utilization.

Humanity has a finite (and too small) capacity for building solar panels. AI requires lots of power already. So the question is, do you want AI to consume X (where X is a pretty big chunk of the pie), or five times X, from that total supply?

Using less PV is great, but only if the total cost ends up cheaper than installing 5X the capacity as terrestrial PV farms, along with daily smoothing batteries.

SpaceX is only skating to where they predict the cost puck will be.

You seem to be ignoring the substantial resource cost of putting them up there.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm just realizing that it's on a substantial cost decline curve.

SpaceX knows that too, obviously.

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.

That's still a smaller ratio than the ~4X gain in irradiance over LEO. But if you're doing it at scale you could use orbital tugs with ion drives or something, and use much less fuel per transfer.

It's probably not competitive at all without having fully reusable launch rockets, so the cost to LEO is a lot lower.

8 tons over 22 is a little over 1/3rd the original payload to LEO. If 4x the solar generation potential (not irradiance - the sun is not 4x brighter in space at Earth's orbital radius) is the reward, that's putting an incredible premium on a 3x multiplier on launch costs per kg (at minimum - likely higher, you're also inheriting a worse radiation environment).

But those two parameters are not equals: 3x the cost per kg is a much higher number then 4x the solar power.

My response is already contained in my comment above, in the sentences after the first.

even at 10% (say putting it on some northen pile of snow) it is still cheaper to put it on earth than launch it

would you prefer big tech to piss their waste heat into your rivers, soils and atmosphere?

or would you prefer them to go to the bathroom upstairs?

at some point big tech is in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation...

Here in Maine in the depths of winter (late December), 1 m^2 of ground can collect 4 kwh per day (weird units).

That's why people are trying to build solar here. Our power is expensive due partially to failing to build basically any new generation, and some land is very cheap, and the operational cost of a solar farm is minuscule.

Solar farming is basically an idle game in real life and my addiction is making me itchy.

You can overprovision, and you should with how stupidly cheap solar is.

That we aren't spending billions of Federal dollars building solar anywhere we can, as much as we can, is pathetic and stupid and a national tragedy.

We got so excited about dam building that there's no where to build useful dams anymore, and there is significant value to be gained by removing those dams, yet somehow we aren't deploying as much solar as we possibly can?

It's a national security issue. China knows this, and is building appropriately.

The southwest should be generating so much solar power that we sequester carbon from the atmosphere simply because there is nothing else left to do with the power.

I don't disagree