News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:Powering the lunar base, version 2 by Nomentatus on Saturday December 31, 2022 @03:19PM (#34200323)
Good but it should probably be mentioned that solar power production and transmission from geostationary orbit (where the sunlight is nearly constant) would work better and have the same positional advantage. Costs have to be considered, of course.

I still kinda like the idea of dropping a few nukes on crater rims at one of the poles to reduce the height necessary to get to perpetual sunlight though.

Re:Powering the lunar base, version 2 by Waterluvian on Saturday December 31, 2022 @09:58PM (#34203135)
I know there’s methods for transmitting solar from orbit to ground, but this made me think about the sci-fi idea of orbiting mainframes that transmit the data to simple terminals.
Re:Powering the lunar base, version 2 by more_corn on Saturday December 31, 2022 @10:50PM (#34203402)
I think space based solar is probably the way to go. Starship will make launch so cheap it’ll be worth getting the panels into perpetual sunlight.
Re:Powering the lunar base, version 2 by drpyser22 on Monday January 02, 2023 @05:25PM (#34224534)
According to the article author it requires costly infrastructure on the moon, compared to their proposal of beaming energy through microwave from Earth.
Re:Powering the lunar base, version 2 by Nomentatus on Thursday January 05, 2023 @04:53AM (#34257830)
Space based solar would also use microwaves to beam the energy to the moon.
Re:Powering the lunar base, version 2 by AtlasBarfed on Sunday January 01, 2023 @02:54AM (#34204521)
Or can you just put some space mirrors in to redirect sunlight to panels on the moon? Maybe even concentrate it?
Re:Powering the lunar base, version 2 by Nomentatus on Sunday January 01, 2023 @03:19AM (#34204623)
Might be still simpler at that. 'Specially if you build the solar panels on the moon from lunar materials, and there is lots of silicon there, yup.