Talk:2812: Solar Panel Placement

Can someone smarter than me do the math on running power lines to a panel on the sun? How long until it would pay for itself?172.70.214.125 05:08, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

$22 million / $0.20 per kWH = 110 million kWH, divide by hours in a year and you get about 12549 kW. Google says the sun is 150 million KM away. IDK the exact details, but a calculator I found online suggests a copper cable with a cross-sectional area of 10m^2 can handle that amount of power transported 150 million KM. The density of copper's about 9 cm/g^3. 150 million km * 10 m^2 * 9 g/cm^3 = 1.35 * 10^16 kg. The cost to get one kilogram to Low-Earth Orbit according to google is >$10,000, let's just use that. Total cost to get to LEO: $1.35 * 10^20. Divide by profit per year => 6.1 trillion years. Tiln (talk) 07:10, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

"The cost to get one kilogram to Low-Earth Orbit [...], let's just use that." Ummm... It's actually easier to leave the solar system than to rendezvous with Mercury (never mind attain even closer stability to the Sun's surface).

I supose you could always go to an orbit a very long way away (near solar-escape) and add a little extra reverse delta-V to zero your orbital movement and then fall down. But you must not miss the pinprick Sun, or you're in a highly elliptic comet-like trajectory (with even higher demands needed to circularise at perihelion), so you need to be very precise about stopping and dodging through the gravity wells of any planets you plunge past. Not that not missing is going to do you much good, either.

...hmmm, hang on, maybe that's what the cables back to Earth are for. Spooled in/out just at the right rate (perhaps some bungee-chord included), it's how you stop just above the Sun's surface (at the limit of the conductive cable, then cut the retarding bungee just as you're stable enough at the bottom of the bounce!) and stay there. Ok, not a problem. It'll work after all^{[actual citation needed]} and I withdraw all my petty objections! 172.71.242.82 10:43, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Congrats, you've just made the universe's smallest Dyson sphere component! 162.158.2.38 07:33, 8 August 2023 (UTC)