It's the dawn of the true space age.
And though Musk isn't a fan, this could even make solar power satellites economical. The monolithic designs from the 1970s would be absurdly expensive, but modern designs like SPS-Alpha get economies of scale by using lots of small identical parts that self-assemble in orbit. According to the book The Case for Space Solar Power, a 2GW satellite would deliver electricity at 15 cents/kWh at pre-SpaceX launch costs. I plugged BFR's $50/kg into its cost breakdown and got 4 cents/kWh, which is pretty good for zero-carbon baseload. Ground solar is cheaper by itself, but probably not after including storage.
The basic idea is geosynchronous orbit, microwave power transmission with a phased array device that requires a reference signal from the target location, and a wire mesh collector several miles wide. Over 24 hours, a solar panel in geosynch collects 5.4 times as much light as one on Earth. At the time the book was written, the power transmission had been tested over a couple dozen miles, and was 40% efficient.
Longer-term, if we collect fuel from the moon to go from LEO to GEO, we could make it even cheaper.
And though Musk isn't a fan, this could even make solar power satellites economical. The monolithic designs from the 1970s would be absurdly expensive, but modern designs like SPS-Alpha get economies of scale by using lots of small identical parts that self-assemble in orbit. According to the book The Case for Space Solar Power, a 2GW satellite would deliver electricity at 15 cents/kWh at pre-SpaceX launch costs. I plugged BFR's $50/kg into its cost breakdown and got 4 cents/kWh, which is pretty good for zero-carbon baseload. Ground solar is cheaper by itself, but probably not after including storage.
The basic idea is geosynchronous orbit, microwave power transmission with a phased array device that requires a reference signal from the target location, and a wire mesh collector several miles wide. Over 24 hours, a solar panel in geosynch collects 5.4 times as much light as one on Earth. At the time the book was written, the power transmission had been tested over a couple dozen miles, and was 40% efficient.
Longer-term, if we collect fuel from the moon to go from LEO to GEO, we could make it even cheaper.