Comment by jandrese

Ultimately the problem with these plans is that solar panels are cheap, but launching them into space is not. There is no point in the near future where launch costs become so cheap that it doesn't make sense to do this instead just building ten times as many panels for the same cost and installing them around the world. The math may change if we ever deploy a space elevator or do asteroid capture and orbital mining/manufacturing, but those are all in the distant future.