4 ms·

If you are doing solar anyway and need a decently transparent atmosphere to get power through, why not leave the solar panels on the ground?

• DennisP 4y ago
  Because from a geostationary satellite, you'll collect power all through the night for most of the year. It's like having noon sun for 24 hours a day.
  • jiveturkey 4y ago
    How so? A geostationary satellite sees night time.
    • DennisP 4y ago
      Not on most days, because the Earth is a lot smaller in the satellite's sky than it is from LEO, and the equator is tilted with respect to the Earth's orbit. So there's a 44-day period around each equinox, during which there will be shadow for a few minutes per day, up to 72 minutes at the equinox itself. The rest of the time, the satellite gets full sun for 24 hours. https://www.viasat.com/about/newsroom/blog/how-satellites-are-affected-by-the-spring-and-autumn-equinoxes/ https://www.viasat.com/about/newsroom/blog/how-satellites-ar...
• JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  Right-of-way, transmission lines running through expensive real estate, cooling towers heating up rivers, limits to size (you can run out of ground, but you'll never run out of space). And on the ground you get this annoying eclipse phenomenon called 'night'. Takes away half your potential collecting time. Also solar flux is like 9X more dense outside the atmosphere. So it takes far smaller surface to collect the same energy.