A Dyson Sphere is a theoretical structure built around a star to tap all of its energy. It¡¯s pure science fiction. But our Big Tech overlords seem determined to build a Dollar-Store Dyson Sphere around Earth, surrounding it with enough orbiting solar panels and data centers to blot out the stars.

In theory, a Dyson Sphere is evidence of a highly advanced civilization. In our reality, the Dollar-Store Dyson Sphere suggests our civilization might be making too many expensive, complicated solutions for problems that don¡¯t really exist.

Meta Platforms recently?announced a deal with Virginia-based startup Overview Energy to someday buy up to 1 gigawatt of power generated by Overview¡¯s also-theoretical space-based solar energy technology. This would involve 1,000 satellites in geosynchronous orbit (GEO) collecting the sun¡¯s energy and then zapping it in infrared beams to panels on the ground 22,000 miles below. Easy-peasy.

The thinking behind space solar makes some sense: The sun doesn¡¯t always shine on Earth, which means solar panels on the ground aren¡¯t always gathering energy. There are no clouds to block the sun in space, so aside from a couple of times per year around the equinoxes, panels in GEO are constantly bombarded with solar rays.

And that¡¯s about as far as the technology makes sense right now. That¡¯s because, to put it bluntly, batteries exist. And there are massive technological hurdles that must be cleared to make space solar truly compete with them.

The economic justification for these systems depends heavily on how much it costs to get them into space. When drawing up their base-case scenarios, space-solar companies typically see a day when such launches will be dirt cheap. They argue this will make the cost of their energy competitive with or even cheaper than any terrestrial source, including utility-scale solar with battery storage.

On its website, Overview Energy charts launch costs against energy costs. If a launch costs $1,000 per kilogram, then the cost of energy is about $135 per megawatt-hour, according to the company. Energy and launch costs drop neatly in tandem, so that a launch costing just $200 per kilogram leads to an energy cost of about $40 per megawatt-hour, which would make it cheaper than any large-scale energy source currently available, according to Lazard¡¯s latest Levelized Cost of Energy report.

Launches are nowhere near that cheap yet. The most recent payload (for which we have disclosed pricing) that SpaceX¡¯s Falcon Heavy system took to geostationary transfer orbit (GTO), where spacecraft go to reach GEO, was the GOES-19 weather satellite in June 2024. That trip cost $152.5 million, or $30,500 per kilogram. At that rate, Overview Energy¡¯s space-solar system would cost more than $4,100 per megawatt-hour, roughly 45...