Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

dasmoth

Elon pretty emphatically isn't a believer in orbital solar generation as a way to power planetary infrastructure.

More here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/elon-musk-on-spa...

View on HN

We're not naming the Dyson Sphere after him, then. ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

I don't think he needs to worry about that, he's concerned with nuts, bolts and engineering not with science fiction.

You believe humans won't build one around this star?

No, we won't. The machines that make us extinct will, however.

Yes, I believe we will not. Materials science is a bitch, you can fantasize all you want but in the end if you can't build it it doesn't matter much.

We will come up with a solution that's little more elegant long before we have the means to build one of those.

Well, clearly not!

But I don't think his objection is using solar power for space-based infrastructure. Quite the contrary! (Dragon is solar-powered, but could fairly easily do everything except maybe long-duration Dragonlab missions on batteries if Elon really didn't like solar). I think the objection is to the complexities and transmission losses of beaming orbital solar power back to Earth.

Of course, if you start moving your energy-intensive industries out of the gravity well...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com