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We're talking about arrays big enough to circle the moon, that's massive scale. Putting those on the poles will dramatically reduce the radiation you can interc
by simonh 5y ago
We're talking about arrays big enough to circle the moon, that's massive scale. Putting those on the poles will dramatically reduce the radiation you can intercept for a given area, and there's a lot less space at the poles than round the equator, because sphere. For smaller arrays the poles make perfect sense.
- rbanffy 5y agoUnless the panels you describe can't rotate and always face up, there is no change in the amount of sunlight you get per area between the pole or the equator.
- simonh 5y agoExcept, as has already been pointed out, you have to space out angled panels much further apart longitudinally near the poles otherwise they block each other. We're going round in circles on this. Consider a relatively modest 1km square patch of such a massive array. At the equator this patch will consist of panels laid out flat horizontally relative to the 'ground', with a 10m patch spaced every 10m (no gap). At 80 degrees latitude this patch will consist of panels angled up at 80 degrees in longitudinal strips. Let's say each panel is a square 10m x 10m. If the next strip towards the equator is placed 10m away from the foot of the strip 'behind' it, almost all of the strip behind will be obscured in it's shadow. In fact the strips would need to be spaced about every 60m instead of every 10m. That's 1/7th the density. Instead of 1 sq km of panel area you'd only have 0.14 sq km of panels.
- rbanffy 5y agoIf we circle the Moon, even near the poles, we are talking about many square kilometers of solar panels. Unless energy consumption by our lunar civilization is totally insane, I wouldn't mind some of the panels not generating power in some alignments (half of them wouldn't generate any power half of the time anyway).
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]