Reply #39: "Miracle" doesn't even begin to cover it

[Dead_Parrot]

The cost of space-grade solar panels (in case you hadn't noticed the ISS was recently upgraded) is $300 million for 30 kW. That's $10,000 per watt, or $10,000,000,000,000 per GW. ...but then a miracle happens...

The weight of current tech is around 12g/W: call it 10 to be nice and make it a round number. That makes the finished article 10,000,000 kg for the array, even if we ignore the control systems, GW magnetron and 1km-wide antenna: even if Falcon reach their target, that's $33,650,000,000 just to put the panels in orbit....but then a miracle happens...

Incidentally, that's 71,293,179,456 kg of RP-1 kerosene up in smoke to reach LEO. Even at the 46.2 MJ/kg of standard kerosene, that's 104.4 GWyr of energy pissed away before you've even bolted the bugger together.

Oh, and the xenon propellant to push it from LEO to GSO via ion drive is about $4.5 billion, 'cause it's rather expensive stuff. Just FYI.

So no, the EROEI isn't "very high", it's actually an exercise in fractions. And the chances of this totalling less than $15 billion in the next 200 years make the lottery look like a dead cert.