Apparently it would cost about $500,000,000,000 (or five hundred billion dollars) to construct a band of solar panels across the equator of the Moon, which without the unreliability of Earth dynamics such as seasonal differences in sun strength, clouds obsucring the photons of light and a thick atmosphere absorbing energy before it reaches the ground etc., would produce about 13,000,000,000,000 (or thirteen trillion) watts of energy.
That is almost enough to sustain the whole global requirement of electrical consumption, not including other forms of delivered power such as those like transportation. Such a project would be costed over an extended period of time, estimated at 100 years meaning a spending budget close to $5,000,000,000 (five billion) per year.
The energy could be beamed back to earth not only by transportation of some kind, but instead by microwaves, and converted back into electricity with relatively little loss in the process. As we know projects overrun on their budget, so if this particular project did overrun by a rediculous amount of 100% then that cost would be a whopping trillion dollarsfor the entire during of the construction of the lunar equatorial solar power plant.
However, this cost was drawn up by ESA and NASA which factors in the ESA and NASA cost of launching on their rocket technology, which weighs in at a crazy $200,000,000 per launch. The idea is that the the panels are built here on Earth and alot of other infrastructure is built on the Moon itself to save money. Yet, there are companies already building rockets which are far cheaper with Space-X being the first, without a $60,000,000 launch rocket. Even further is Reaction Engines Skylon Spaceplane, which can launch for as little as $8,000,000 with all insurance costs already factored in. Such a mandatory extra inflates even the Space-X option to over $80,000,000.
Now you could summise against any rise in cost there would be an offset with the cheaper modes of transportation to get the panels to the Moon in the first place, but as such a project has not been attempted we shall keep the $1 Trillion price tag. And for the lulz let's just say that inflation will increase it even further because that is what happens.
We then have to ask the question, why are Oil companies spending $1 Trillion every single year to pump oil out of the ground? Where that particular method of extracting energy is not only getting more expensive due to inflation, but also due to the need to go further out to sea and setup up longer machinary through no loading bearing water as well as having to deep ever further into hard rock at higher altitudes on land.
Oil cost's $1 Trillion a year and rising. Solar could cost $1 Trillion over 100 years. What the heck is going on?!
(PS. The 100 hundred years thing is what I added)
