>Unfortunately, it turns out that the minimum altitude necessary to avoid any shading is 2750 m, rather taller than any structure ever built on Earth. Well, yo

>Unfortunately, it turns out that the minimum altitude necessary to avoid any shading is 2750 m, rather taller than any structure ever built on Earth. Well, you wouldn't be building it on earth. The gravity on the moon is 1/6 as strong, which I understand means it could be 6x as tall as anything on earth. Granted, this would still be massive, but closer to reasonable. >there are numerous places on the surface of the Moon, including close to polar regions, that are always in view of Earth. As I recall, the moon is tidally locked - half of it is always visible to the earth, the other half never is. Is he just qualifying that the poles are the exception? >Microwave antennas positioned here could receive power beamed up from the surface of the Earth from one of at least three stations such that one is always in view. Why based on earth? This means you have to deal with earth's atmosphere, which creates other problems. My suggestion would be to put satelites at the moon-earth lagrange points, and have them beam power around. Knowing nothing about the analysis of these things, this would probably lead to a simpler array. You could also probably eliminate the proliferation concern this way, eg by putting it at the L2 point.