In orbit the sun hits things with around 1300 watts of energy per square meter, why can't I invent a very cheap 99% efficient PV panel, or even a 30-50% efficient one (25% is about the most efficient commercially available ones on the market). I could deploy a huge series of arrays in say a similar orbit as the moon and microwave it it between relays to get it closer to earth then have some geostationary microwave stations to beam back down to earth. *sigh* then I could raise the funds 500bn to 1 trillion I need to build my 'solar laser' to start mining asteroids so I can pour tons of resources into developing good AI, human mind copying tech and an SI at which point I can buy the minds of the most brilliant people on the planet and build several SI's with them and use the SI's to quickly catapult humans to a Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale and within 100 years have us developing Type II technologies and deploying them to get us to Type II status! Oh, and I bet the SI's would figure out FTL travel pretty fast. *sigh*