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a11en t1_iy02dc1 wrote

Reply to comment by MysteriousSophon in News Release: NREL Creates Highest Efficiency 1-Sun Solar Cell - 39.5% efficiency by TimeSpentWasting

It will never reach mass market as a triple junction device. These aren’t cost effective to use terrestrially. The reality is we have space to spread out down here, and up in space there’s no elbow room. So triple junctions head to space and we get single junctions - if we’re lucky at 19% efficiency.

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Prowler1000 t1_iy0xgsj wrote

I'm not quite sure where you're getting that there's no elbow room in space.. the biggest reason they'd be used up there is because of the launch cost as well as ease of repair.

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CX-001 t1_iy0yk1r wrote

> no elbow room in space

The other guy was probably talking about cost per unit of weight.

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a11en t1_iy1kjj8 wrote

Yes, absolutely correct. Both weight and size are considerations for payload.

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Prowler1000 t1_iy0yr48 wrote

Yeah but saying that "there's no elbow room in space" is such a weird way to word it to the point that it becomes misleading. There isn't, as far as I know, a misconception about the amount of room in space but comments like that are how those misconceptions are born.

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theartificialkid t1_iy1vzna wrote

> I'm not quite sure where you're getting that there's no elbow room in space.

Launching stuff is incredibly expensive, so you can’t afford to have a whole room just for elbows on a space station.

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a11en t1_iy1ka9r wrote

This is a good point. I was meaning as payload. The amount of cash necessary to take a unit of weight up is otherworldly. ;)

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