The nice thing about solar is that it doesn't have to monopolize the land. If you want to convert a suburban parking lot to a solar farm you don't have to evic

The nice thing about solar is that it doesn't have to monopolize the land. If you want to convert a suburban parking lot to a solar farm you don't have to evict the cars, you just have to install them high enough that the cars can park underneath. Orbital power is a total nonstarter if we aren't building the panels in orbit. Launch costs will absolutely destroy any ROI, even before you get into the transmission losses beaming the power back to Earth. SpaceX has completely revolutionized the launch industry, getting costs down to around $1200/lb. A typical solar panel weighs about 40lbs, but aren't optimized for weight. Assuming you can reduce this to 20lbs per panel that's still $24,000 per panel not counting transmission equipment and the like. The panel itself costs maybe $2000 for a very high efficiency model. The launch costs dwarf the panel costs, even when accounting for the lack of weather in space. It just doesn't make sense, especially when you start adding in all of the additional costs like building the satellites, the ground stations, transmission losses, fuel to keep the orbits from decaying, the fact that you won't be able to send these to Geo Orbit without incurring crippling transmission losses, so you'll need a lot of ground stations, etc... Compared to all of that, the problem of finding parking lots in the suburbs seems absolutely trivial.