“Four 5-mile-wide Soletta mirrors in lunar orbit does not sound too practical. ”

Actually reflectors of that size have compared well to power satellites of similar capabilities which was the original subject.

However the rest that and the rest of your post serves to reinforce the intent of my original post.

There are a number of ways to achieve the objective and all should be evaluated based on the desired objective.

Curious, I just tried to access the article and it does not make such a request.

At any rate some of the highlights are:

(1) SpaceX once had plans for up to eight more launches this year, including the debut of its new rocket, the Falcon Heavy. But all are on indefinite hold.

(2) At his July 20 news conference, he (meaning Musk) offered the possibility the company could resume launching again as early as September. But during a business conference in California on Tuesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the company now has pushed back launches for at least the next couple of months.

(3) But others, starting with U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, who chairs the House Science, Space and Technology Committee, still wonder whether that’s all there is to the accident.

On Aug. 4, Smith sent a letter to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden expressing concern that NASA plans to use the Falcon 9 to send astronauts to the International Space Station. Smith urged NASA to run an independent investigation, with recommendations for the company it hired.

(4) Bolden replied three weeks later that NASA is independently investigating, revealing a probe the agency had not previously announced. He suggested NASA has the legal authority to demand changes it might find prudent before it puts any more payloads on the unmanned Dragon

(5) George Abbey, a former NASA official and now a senior fellow in space policy at Rice University, said SpaceX’s private-satellite customers likely are patient. But they want to make certain the cause of the explosion is found and that quality-control programs are improved, he said.

Abbey noted the underwater-salvage operations SpaceX has done to look for debris of the Falcon 9 in the Atlantic Ocean.

“That would indicate they really want to get some confirmation of the strut, or they are possibly looking at other possible causes the accident,” he said. “That uncertainty is probably causing some unease with their customers. It ought to. And it is probably causing some unease with NASA as well.”

(6joew) Eric Stallmer, president of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, said most SpaceX customers likely are more interested in making sure that the company addresses all concerns than in the time it takes. He also noted at least one potential customer has taken a satellite to a European rocket.

As long as SpaceX is not launching, “understandably, that will happen. It’s a two-way street. A lot of these folks, they have timelines. They have investors, and investment requirements they have to meet,” Stallmer said.

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-0901-spacex-delay-20150901-story.html

Then it is a question of getting those upper stage Ehricke/von Braun wet workshops into lunar polar frozen orbits along with the prospectors and then robot landers.

I saw the IMAX movie “Journey to Space” narrated by Patrick Stewart today. It featured about 30 seconds of some spectacular shuttle lift-offs which I greatly enjoyed and the rest was…propaganda. For anyone well read on space history it was a fairy tale. The ARM and human mars mission portrayal and trivializing of radiation hazards and hypogravity debilitation did not surprise me having read the same misinformation for years. It claimed that ARM was going to help protect the planet from impacts which was perhaps the most blatant deception.

With this stuff being digested by the public the future looks bleak.

I seemed to remember a Russian Mars probe to fly to Phobos and conduct a laser experiment, but the probe went out of control.

Of course, it has been years since I read that, and I’ve since forgotten what it was called.

“If beamed space solar power in vacuum is workable, then that’s great for activities in shadowed locations on the Moon.”

Alternatively, solar reflecting mirrors could be placed in Lunar orbit to illuminate the surface and allow solar energy collection to take place on the Lunar surface.

http://www.nss.org/settlement/nasa/spaceres/images/figV-1-5.GIF