I really like the idea of Remote Mines but, in practice, Proximity Mines were by far the most useful of all the mines in Goldeneye 007.

Any article or statement that starts with "could" needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Well, yes, it could, but it is also not likely.

Could Keith Gribblesheimer steal away Gal Gadot? Yes, he could. Is it likely? Not much more than winning powerball.

Submission Statement:

A study from a group of researchers at the Colorado School of Mines looked at powering remote mining sites on earth that aren’t connected to any electric grid.

They found that solar power satellites aren’t yet economical enough to warrant the investment for powering remote mining sites that aren’t connected to any electric grid.

So, the answer to whether a space-based power satellite could power remote mines is “yes,” but there’s not much of a business case for it. There’s still a long way to go before beaming power from space becomes a profitable venture. But, as the authors note at the end of the paper, the whole calculation changes dramatically if some of the parts for the satellite are manufactured in space. So, there is still a point in the future, with a much more fleshed-out space infrastructure, where the price might eventually become competitive.

The following submission statement was provided by /u/Aeromarine_eng:

Submission Statement:

A study from a group of researchers at the Colorado School of Mines looked at powering remote mining sites on earth that aren’t connected to any electric grid.

They found that solar power satellites aren’t yet economical enough to warrant the investment for powering remote mining sites that aren’t connected to any electric grid.

So, the answer to whether a space-based power satellite could power remote mines is “yes,” but there’s not much of a business case for it. There’s still a long way to go before beaming power from space becomes a profitable venture. But, as the authors note at the end of the paper, the whole calculation changes dramatically if some of the parts for the satellite are manufactured in space. So, there is still a point in the future, with a much more fleshed-out space infrastructure, where the price might eventually become competitive.

Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/zqbt5q/could_spacebased_satellites_power_remote_mines/j0xbidi/

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Unless you want to build an actual death ray, the footprint of the receiving array on he ground is comparable to simply building a terrestial solar array.

Could you power equipment this way? Sure. Does it make any actual sense, given the inherent downsides and massive additional costs?

No.

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Regardless of where the components are built, the answer will always be "no" because you still need the equipment on the ground to collect this radiation from space and turn it to electricity. The cost of delivering the components to the project site in geosynchronous orbit over the target site is competing with the cost of extra solar panels and batteries delivered to the work site on the ground.

We already have that kind of equipment for handling the radiation received from that giant fusion reactor in the sky, so at every step of the way these plans to capture energy from that fusion reactor and beam it to Earth are going to be competing with the energy from that fusion reactor that is already being beamed to Earth by that fusion reactor.

Everything that happens on the ground to receive that energy is already being done with solar farms. The biggest difference between solar farms and satellites beaming down microwaves is that one of those systems is a directed energy weapon to be used against cities and the other is not. Apart from the utility as directed energy weapons, space power satellites add extra cost and complexity to what solar farms can already accomplish with far less environmental, economic and technical risk.