Any out there methods to send energy down besides rf? Chucking battery down? Dangling catenary wire to a high altitude battery plane?
Realistically, running a cable to Earth via a space elevator would be possible, but the elevator would necessarily be at the equator, so only able to generate power half the time.
If you had the space elevator with a receiver for highly focused, high energy rf that wouldn't work with an atmosphere, you could then put the solar array in a higher orbit with 99.9% sun exposure.
Oh! here's an idea! Electric airplanes that pull power from a dangling induction charger!
Re:SpaceX – Starfall
by snowchaser on Thursday November 05, 2026 @12:30AM
(#50375570)
One thing that I haven’t seen represented as a risk in space based datacenters is the satellite reentry debris pollution. We are essentially allowing a constant rain of heavy metals, silicon, arsenic, and other nasty things if this idea goes to scale.
Even if all the technical issues can be worked out, which I doubt, the incentives are there to pump as many as possible up there. I don’t think we want to live with that raining down on us all.
Re:SpaceX – Starfall
by amanaplanacanal on Friday November 06, 2026 @05:47AM
(#50390727)
How does that compare to the quantity of natural material already entering the atmosphere?
The attenuation is less than 50% at the wavelengths used by solar panels.
What’s the practical solution to heat radiation that doesn’t require running your chips at infeasible temperatures?
Power and heat radiation are the solved problems at scale in LEO. 50+% of solar energy is attenuated by the atmosphere, so panels can be huge and thin and flimsy in zero-G and get twice as much power as on the ground. Space-Based solar power plants are being actively explored by the US, UK, Chna, and Japan. The real hitch is how to send the power to the ground via microwave without also needing a receiver 20+ km across that lightly crisps birds flying above it.
If the thing that needs the power is in orbit already, all you're doing is sending data, something Starlink already has figured out.
The impractical part is shielding, maintenance, and a modular design that can be remotely maintained from the ground. When you're already running a high-cadence launch schedule, those costs and issues narrow, and you can swap out a component within days.
Again, it makes sense on paper. It might not be more practical than a data center on the ground, but there would be trade-offs.