Because it's a poor use of resources. By surface area, you will get far less power than on the roof. And yet you have to electrically wire all the windows together and hook them to multiple micro inverters to get 110 power. That's running a lot of electrical conduit etc.

That's going to cost a lot of money, for not much power.

If you have the money to do all that, put that money into more roof-top solar. You will get far more bang for the buck.

If you are a company trying to maximize power and your roof is already full of solar, spend the money on a solar farm where land is cheap. You will generate twice the power for the same money.

This is as useless an idea as putting solar panels on the road surface.

Being transparent means that much passes through so they will not generate as much power as dedicated solar panels, but we still have the cost to wire together all the windows electrically and pass to power inverters. Not being on a roof, it's harder to pipe the power, window to window which means cutting through walls or running conduit on the outside of the building.

Windows often get shaded (or even partially shaded) which means there will be a need for micro-inverters so one shaded window doesn't shut down all the other windows.

Solar panels belong where they can get good unobstructed, light. Where they can be compactly wired together. Where they can be maintained without inconveniencing people.

Because launching to a retrograde (reverse direction) geostationary orbit is very expensive in terms of fuel. (see note) You won't have much payload.

It actually takes less fuel to do a "figure 8" trip around the moon and choose to enter a retrograde orbit than to directly inject into such an orbit at launch.

It would not be hard for any major power to have a vehicle of several tons into a retrograde orbit and then release 10's of millions of small ball bearings, or other material. People have suggested sand as it would damage more delicate things such as external wiring and solar panels. Ball bearings would be far more penetrating.

Note: about 7% of the energy to get to space is "free" from the rotation of the Earth. If you want to go into a retrograde orbit, you need to add 14% more energy. 7% to undo what the Earth is already doing, then the amount you would have used plus making up the 7% you didn't get from the Earth.

If it ever gets to that level, there is already some deep, dark stuff, near extinction level stuff going down on the planet.

Yes, it's a horrific thing to contemplate. It would wreck many terribly useful orbits for decades to come. I'm certainly not in favor of it, but I can imagine a nation doing this for some perceived tactical advantage.

Of course. It would be a crime against humanity to do such a thing. But like I said, I'm sure all the great powers have either thought about doing it, or worried about it being done.

I suspect the more Western the power, the more they fear it being done.

Probably no more than a few decades. Orbital dynamics would spread the items to other orbits. There's always be more there we'd like, but in a decade the density would lower enough to be manageable.

If you were in a struggle with an enemy that really depended on those satellites and you felt you could manage without them, you might strike such a blow to gain an advantage in that war.

I'm not remotely suggesting it's a good idea, but it's certainly one that I'm sure various powers have evaluated doing, or worried about being done to them.

No need for a real blast. Just unzip and release them. Orbital dynamics will spread them out. Combinations of sunlight, magnetic fields, jostling with each other will spread them out over a period of days.

They might do like SpaceX does with Starlink. Rotate the vehicle slowly and then just please the payload. A very slow spin will impart enough delta-V to cause them to slowly spread out.

Station keeping tries to keep these satellites within 0.15 degree of their slot. That's about 60 miles worst case. Releasing a few million ball bearings could be awful, especially since you get "another shot" at a collision with any specific satellite every 12 hours.

There have been two confirm hits by space debris on geostationary satellites already with another 20 suspected. That was because of accidents. Now imagine several tons of debris specifically put there for that exact purpose.

Most orbits don't have to be extremely precise. A satellite will pass overhead a few seconds earlier or later over time. They correct the drift when it gets bad enough, but it's not a deal breaker, moment to moment if it's early or late.

But the geostationary orbit does need to be fairly precise. There are millions of dishes that point to the location. The further it is from its exact slot, the more it will drift across the sky. That's undesirable, so they try to keep it right on the centerline of the orbit.

The bad guys would not so much "explode" the vehicle, as unzip it, releasing the millions of balls, letting orbital dynamics do the work. over a few hours they will spread out. Getting hit by one one at 14,000 mph could be awful.

Considering a small fleck of paint actually made a small divot in a Space Shuttle window, imagine what a ball bearing weighing 1/10th of an ounce will do at 14,000mph

You can fit about 3.5 million 1/8th inch ball bearings in 1,000 pounds. That's a lot of debris released all-at-once.

This isn't a case of the "new satellite failing", but rather the new satellite deciding to self destruct an hour after it arrives. The entire point of the mission would be to deny use of the entire geostationary for everyone.

If a satellite has several tons of ball bearings and simply releases them, they will over a day or two spread over the entire orbit.

There has already been a two confirmed debris collisions in geostationary orbit, with another 20 suspected. This was a case where it wasn't intentional. Imagine 3 or 4 tons of steel balls intentionally released into that same orbit on purpose.

The constraints on a geostationary orbit are fairly tight. It's not a wide open orbit, but rather a very narrow line around the earth. The further from dead center, the more fuel they must use for station keeping. They like to stay dead-center because it keeps them in the same place in the sky and reduces the amount of fuel they must expend.

Even dead center, there is drift for several reasons, so fuel must be consumed; just not very much.

The fear is that an enemy will enter the orbit very cleanly, going the opposite direction.

When there are millions of BB's flying at them at 14,000 mph, that's a lot of damage from even one hit. Worse, the entire orbit becomes useless for anybody for many decades.

This is terrifying. Many years ago a proposal was made on how to rapidly destroy every satellite in geosynchronous orbit. Launch a "moon probe" that will do a flyby of the moon, but the return trajectory would enter a retrotgrade geosynchronous orbit.

Once the orbit is entered, it simply gently blows up a payload of a million ball bearings. You now have a million pieces of debris going in a counter orbit at very high speed. It will destroy every single satellite in that orbit in 12 hours.

The idea is that a nation that did not depend on geosynchronous orbit could "level the playing field" against a nation that did make use of that.