Glass windows

From: spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:spacesettlers@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of joe@...

> The area of solar panels you'd need to grow food in high-Earth orbit
> is roughly the same as the area of the ground you're growing crops in.

So your argument is that the efficiency losses at the PV and at the
artificial lights are made up for by the fact that we are illuminating
crops with a lower wattage at tuned wavelengths?

This might even be right, but I still can't get past the cost
differences between square miles of glass panels and Mylar versus square
miles of PV panels and artificial lights. And I wouldn't necessarily
accept that the heat rejection issue turns this around. I don't think
being able to get by with 2/3 or 1/2 of the square area of heat radiator
would pay for having to increase the square area of your PV panels by 3x
or 4x.

Regards,

Mike Combs