ItsAConspiracy t1_ixjg980 wrote
Reply to comment by [deleted] in China says it will use the Tiangong Space Station to test the transmission of space-based solar power to Earth. by lughnasadh
A Falcon Heavy costs $90M for up to 141,000 lbs to LEO, for a total cost of $638/lb. And the Heavy isn't fully reusable, so the main cost is the upper stage that gets thrown away. If Starship or something similar works out, the price will drop to about $30/lb. At that price, space solar starts to make sense.
I plugged that number into the cost estimates from the book The Case for Space Solar Power, which has detailed numbers based on NASA's SPS-ALPHA project, and it came out to 4 cents/kWh including everything (manufacturing, ground station, etc), which is pretty great for clean power on demand without needing storage.
Starship is fueled by methane which can be made pretty easily from water and CO2. With a clean energy source, the whole project could be carbon neutral.
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