Solar power has become the lowest-cost way to generate electricity on Earth. But building it on Earth places some significant limits on how much power it can generate, with the darkness and clouds that often get in the way. So there have always been a few people who liked the idea of putting solar panels where they could produce electricity around the clock: space.

While that would get you near-24/7 power production, it comes with a collection of very obvious drawbacks: high launch costs, inability to service the hardware, and the challenge of getting the power back down to where it’s needed. How these trade-offs play out in the energy marketplace has been difficult to determine, partly because the energy market is changing so rapidly, and partly because we don’t really know what the space-based solar hardware would look like.