The tree · Energy · Happens to the world · Plays out over the whole window
Power sent down from orbit keeps a site on the Moon running for a year
A spacecraft in orbit around the Moon, or parked where it sees the Sun all the time, can collect sunlight and send the energy down to the surface as microwaves or laser light, or reflect sunlight straight onto panels at the site. It avoids both the reactor and the polar ridge, and it would let a site sit anywhere on the Moon. It is the least developed of the three routes: nothing has yet sent useful power from orbit to any surface.
The test: what counts as it having happened
Energy sent from one or more spacecraft in space to a lunar surface site, as microwaves, laser light or reflected sunlight, is converted at the site into at least forty kilowatts of net electrical output available to external loads for at least ninety percent of a twelve-month period, confirmed by the responsible agency's or company's mission record.
Settled by: The responsible agency's or company's mission record
The odds, by how long I live
| baselineto 2071 ± 8 | moderateto 2080 | strongto 2095 | radicalto 2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 8% | 12% | 22% | 38% | 48% |
Each column is a different guess at how long I live, from current trends (baseline) to open-ended. The number is the chance this happens before that deadline, assuming everything it depends on happens first. As of 2026-09-25.
Why these numbers: First estimate, 2026-09-25, proposed by Claude with the node and accepted by John 2026-10-02. The physics is ordinary, but the only orbital power-beaming flight so far delivered milliwatts, a kilowatt to Earth's ground is still under even odds by 2071, and a surface site has two cheaper routes; this one wins only where a site must sit far from the poles and a reactor is ruled out.
What this one is worth
If this happened tomorrow and nothing else changed, the chance that I live and work off Earth by 2071 goes from 0.5% to 0.4% (too small to tell apart from chance). If it turned out no, the same number goes to 0.5% (too small to tell apart from chance).
| Longevity scenario | baseline2071 ± 8 | moderate2080 | strong2095 | radical2136 | openno deadline |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The headline as it stands | 0.5% | 1.2% | 3.8% | 11% | 15% |
| If this settled yes now | 0.4% | 1.2% | 3.9% | 11% | 15% |
| If this settled no now | 0.5% | 1.2% | 3.7% | 11% | 15% |
This is what the site says in advance, before the thing happens. When it does, the
ledger entry that records it quotes this figure beside what actually followed, so a
reader can see whether the prediction held. Worked out at the run
2026-10-11-scan by holding this step at each outcome in turn and
playing the whole tree out again, 20,000 times per
scenario. That is a throw of the dice, so a move smaller than about
0.10 points is inside the noise rather than
a finding.
The last check
Once a week the tree is read against the news, node by node, against the test above. Open a line to see what that week held. Every check ever made on this node is on the Radar page.
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2026-10-04 Nothing new
No orbit-to-Moon power delivery was reported; Volta's LightGrid is a plan with an Earth-orbit test and surface benefit not before 2028.
Notes
Added 2026-09-25 as a route under E-power-through-the-lunar-night-at-a-surface-site (candidate 1 of docs/proposal-function-over-route-2026-09-25.md, approved by John 2026-09-25). A cousin of M-power-beamed-from-orbit-to-ground-at-kilowatt-scale, not a dependency: a lunar system could be built without an Earth demonstration first.
Think this is wrong, missing something it depends on, or badly estimated?
Open an issue about it, or read
how feedback gets folded into the tree.
The record itself is data/E-energy.toml in the public repository.