Re:Space Exploration and the Poor (Score 1)

I know it would be nice to find a miracle solution to the chicken-and-egg problem of space development, but SPS is probably not going to be it. The cost of building and launching such a system is far higher than the cost of simply designing better Earth based generation and storage capacity. Beaming power through the atmosphere is inefficent and carries risks to birds or people who might stray too near the beam. It is also affected by the same weather uncertainties that ground-based solar is susceptible to. Basically, fi you go with solar power, it makes a lot more sense to build it on the ground than to launch it into space.