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farglebargle -> RE: The Insanity of Bush Hatred (11/22/2007 7:13:32 AM)
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From the SFF Interim Working Groups recent report.
http://spacesolarpower.files.wordpress.com/2007/11/final-sbsp-interim-assessment-release-01.pdf
quote:
Several major challenges will need to be overcome to make SBSP a reality, including the creation of low‐
cost space access and a supporting infrastructure system on Earth and in space. Solving these space
access and operations challenges for SBSP will in turn also open space for a host of other activities that
include space tourism, manufacturing, lunar or asteroid resource utilization, and eventually settlement
to extend the human race. Because DoD would not want to own SBSP satellites, but rather just
purchase the delivered energy as it currently does via traditional terrestrial utilities, a repeated review
finding is that the commercial sector will need Government to accomplish three major tasks to catalyze
SBSP development. The first is to retire a major portion of the early technical risks. This can be
accomplished via an incremental research and development program that culminates with a space‐
borne proof‐of‐concept demonstration in the next decade. A spiral development proposal to field a 10
MW continuous pilot plant en route to gigawatts‐class systems is included in Appendix B. The second
challenge is to facilitate the policy, regulatory, legal, and organizational instruments that will be
necessary to create the partnerships and relationships (commercial‐commercial, government‐
commercial, and government‐government) needed for this concept to succeed. The final Government
contribution is to become a direct early adopter and to incentivize other early adopters much as is
accomplished on a regular basis with other renewable energy systems coming on‐line today.
quote:
From the perspective of today’s launch infrastructure, this may seem unimaginably large and ambitious,
but in another sense it is well within the relative scale of other human accomplishments which at their
time also seemed astounding creations‐‐the Eiffel Tower is 8,045 Tons; the Sear’s Tower 222,500 tons;
the Empire State Building 365,000 – 392,000 tons, the largest of our supertankers is 650,000MT, and the
Great Pyramid at Giza is 5,900,000 MT. Contemplating a space solar power satellite today is probably
analogous to contemplating the building of the large hydro‐electric dams, which even today cause
observers to marvel.
Today the United States initiates less than 15 launches per year (at 25MT or less). Construction of a
single SBSP satellite alone would require in excess of 120 such launches. That may seem like an
astounding operations tempo until one considers the volume of other transportation infrastructure.
For instance, in 2005, Atlanta International Airport saw 980,197 takeoffs & landings alone, an average of
1,342 takeoffs/day, or about 1 every minute 24 hours a day. In the same year, Singapore’s 41 ship cargo
berths served 130,318 vessel arrivals (about 15 per hour), handling about 1.15 billion gross tons (GT), and
23.2 million twenty‐foot equivalent units (TFUs).
Technology adoption can move at astounding speeds once a concept has been demonstrated and a
market is created. Who would have imagined that barely 100 years after the single wood & cloth, 338
kg Wright Flier flew only 120 feet at a mere 30 mph, that the world would have fleets of thousands of
jet‐powered, all‐metal giants weighing as much as 590,000 kg cruising between continents at close to
the speed of sound? Who, as the first miles were being laid, would have foreseen the rate at which
railroads, highways, electrification or communications infrastructure would grow? SBSP calls mankind
to look at the means to achieve orbit and in‐space maneuver differently—not as monuments in
themselves, but as a utilitarian infrastructure purposefully designed to achieve a very worthwhile goal.
quote:
APPENDIX B – DEMONSTRATION ROADMAP
AN AGGRESSIVE AND ACHIEVABLE SBSP TECHNOLOGY DEMONSTRATOR ROADMAP:
10 Years – 10 Megawatts – $10 Billion
Introduction
One of the fundamental challenges of space solar power is how to achieve the critical transition from analytical
studies, concepts and component science and technology (S&T) to large‐scale operational systems. The
technology road map formulated by NASA in the late 1990s envisioned a series of five stages, each five years in
duration, and each involving significant advances in component technologies and increases in power levels.
This 25‐year roadmap also envisioned potential changes in the design concepts at each stage, perhaps
including fundamental changes in the systems being demonstrated at each stage.
Because of the significant technological progress that has been achieved in the past decade, it is now possible
to envision a more straightforward approach that could significantly accelerate the pace of SBSP technology /
system maturation and validation. This new strategy would focus efforts through an integrated large‐scale
demonstrator, to be flown in less than 10 years, at a cost of less than $10B, and delivering power to the Earth of
approximately 10 megawatts.
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