Talk:Solar Power

This article claims that Solar Power Beamed to Luna from orbit avoids the very difficult task of soft landing stuff on luna with which to generate solar power. Consider the difficulty of building the solar power station at L1. It should be about as easy to build an orbiting mass accelerater to decelerate cargo for Luna to stationary with respect to the surface from an orbital altitude of 40 kilometers. From there to the surface the drop only generates about 362 meters per second. That plus about 40 seconds gravity losses on Luna is not very difficult task, only about 427meters per second mission velocity. If 3000meters per second can be managed for the one way descent rocket to a robot base, that only adds about 17% to the mass of a 100kg payload dropped from orbit to Luna. If the mass accelerater can be orbited a little closer to the surface, perhaps 2 kilometers over a flat mountain peak, more can be shaved off of that.

--Farred 14:34, 24 March 2009 (UTC)

A large power supply during the night is not needed on Luna immediately. Check out the strategy that is suggested for maintaining warmth overnight in the First Base article. Work and power use could be religated to daylight time until an extensive power grid and power storage facilities are manufactured largely from lunar materials.--Farred 14:50, 24 March 2009 (UTC)