Solar because r^2 diminishing returns
> While the Earth-facing side of the Moon can obtain practically infinite quantities of very cheap power if we beam it up from Earth, which is greatly preferable to attempting to engineer some sort of solar or thermal system which can cope with the Moon’s 28-day day-night cycle, this approach won’t work on Mars.
You may enjoy his recent interview on Patio11's podcast:
[1] https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/solar-economi...
Usually when corporations or officials speak about space, they cherry pick some single issue, or maybe a few but not all of them. E.g. talk about weight but forget about cost, talk about weight and cost but forget about cooling. Or when companies talk about any complex gadgets in space and forget to account for them being space based, thus more complex and expensive. These incomplete PR statements are useless for regular people outside of the industry because we lack a lot of knowledge to fill the gaps.
But reading his posts we can very quickly and reliably get basic understanding why some ideas are dead ends for nearest century despite being hyped, and why others are potentially interesting. Also he references a lot of sources in his posts, which would be hard to find but here they are linked in the relevant articles.
And finally his roasting of the Space Disgrace System is worth it on it's own really :)
Well, (a) self-publishing is free, and (b) expertise cannot be established by proclamation, it requires evidence. Just as in science.
Earlier, the originator proposed an Earth-to-Moon microwave power supply link, which makes no sense at all for multiple reasons. That proposal suggests a lack of basic engineering knowledge.
Realize that nuclear also gets more expensive on Mars, because there are no convenient lakes or rivers for cooling water. Instead you need to build a large radiator or underground pipe grid.
You also get global dust storms enveloping the planet every few years for several weeks at a time. These leave a lot of dust on panels, but they also drastically cut the solar radiation received at the surface.
Solar panels degrade faster on Mars too. You could replace them by sending new ones, but that will add up to a lot of mass. Or you could design panels that degrade more slowly, but that's not a given yet.
Basically solar is not going to scale well on Mars. It might work for a small facility, but not for a city.
My personal hope is that there might be some untapped resources of hydrocarbons or methane in Mars that could be used to generate energy from local sources.
https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61b40f74f9cdfc...
As for dust storms, you need stored energy anyway -- nuclear power goes down too! A big tank of oxygen counts as "stored energy," and so does a big container of desorbed lithium carbonate (CO2 scrubber material).
If the panels are send from Earth to Mars, then dropping them in orbit mean that you don't have to account for their weight for landing... or don't have to land at all. Park in orbit, drop you payload and back to earth for the next delivery.
Remember that Mars' atmospheric pressure is a tiny fraction of that on Earth, so the performance difference between a solar panel in orbit, and on the surface, is negligible (until a dust storm starts). So there's no reason to consider putting them in orbit, especially considering the much higher complexity and power losses involved in delivering power to the surface.
I wonder if you could build a space elevator on Mars (third of our gravity = much less demanding on materials) and then simply get the electricity generated by orbital solar panels back to the surface using ye olde cables, immune to dust storms.
Every drop of fuel used to land and take-off has to be send to earth orbit first. If you replace that fuel with payload, you're looking at a very different equation.
https://caseyhandmer.wordpress.com/2019/08/20/space-based-so...
With 500W in every season, no clouds, things compare well to where I live. Should give close to 1000kWh/year, but reliably so.
If Petrovskite Solar Cells will work on Mars reliably, they can be produced directly on Mars and used together with sand batteries for stable supply of energy and heat.
I also don't think there was any "conflation."
For example, he seems to be confused about energy vs. power, which units to use and what to they mean.