Energy Security

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How to Build a Space Solar Power
System Sunsat Corp 25th International Space
Development Conference Los Angeles, California
May 4-7, 2006
Darel Preble President, Space Solar Power
Institute Chair, Space Solar Power
Workshop www.sspi.gatech.edu darel.preble_at_comcast.
net
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No company(s) or government agency today, is
chartered or capable of assume the immense
financial and technical task of initiating
construction of an SSPS. It would be like
asking a company to build Hoover Dam, the
Transcontinental Railroad or the Interstate
system without Federal assistance.
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• Speaking as a former strategic planner for
  the largest electric power company in the US,
  there are simply too many engineering, financial,
  regulatory and managerial risks for any existing
  organization - utility, aerospace, or government
  to undertake building an SSPS. This conclusion
  is not a new
• In the bureaucratic format, satellite power
  has no natural home and no built-in constituency.
  NASA, now a timid, fearful NASA made up of aging
  pre-retirees rather than the young tigers who
  made Apollo work in just eight years, would be
  frightened out of its skin by a tough,
  make-it-work assignment with a tight budget and a
  tighter time scale. And NASAs charter doesnt
  cover energy. The DOE? Its charter doesnt
  include space. The NSF? Satellite power isnt
  science, its engineering. - The Worlds
  Energy Future Belongs in Orbit, by Dr. Gerard
  ONeill, Trilogy January/February 1992

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America has faced such great challenges
before and traveled this road many times before
... There is a tried and true vehicle, that
could initiate SSP construction today.
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Excursion Train Rounding Cape Horn at The Head of
The Great American Canon, With a View of The
South Fork of The American River, Where Gold Was
Discovered in 1848. - Frank Leslie's Illustrated
Newspaper, April 27, 1878
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• A public/private Congressionally chartered
  corporation - like Comsat Corp., chartered in
  1962 - has all the requisite advantages.
• Comsat Corp. and its sister Intelsat opened
  space to the diverse 100 Billion per year
  communications satellite business of today.

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• Sunsat Corp. would be dedicated and entirely
  focussed on building a Space Solar Power
  Satellite System.
• It would be open to private investment, as
  Comsat was, and given certain developmental
  subsidies.

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• The bridge needed to build SSP is to lower the
  current prices of space photovoltaics, space
  transportation, and other necessary commodities -
  now too high for SSP to be profitable. We agree.
  With higher PV production and launch volumes,
  etc., Sunsat would be legislatively equipped to
  build those bridges, just as those previous
  public/private companies did.

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• Key Technologies
• Low cost orbital space transportation (freight,
  not people)
• Thin-film space PV fabric.
• WPT transmitting antenna rectenna receiver.
  
• Telerobotic assembly and nearly autonomous
  operation.
• Second Generation Superconducting cabling - now
  available.
• Ultimately the customer will choose his delivery
  mode
• Sunsat Corp. would control all delivery
  building, owning and operating the satellite
  system.

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Source Ken Zweibel, NREL
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• We suggest legislation to provide a temporary 85
  subsidy to new private or public/ private
  businesses, such as SunSat Corp, which are
  contracting for space photovoltaic arrays and 30
  subsidy to established businesses contracting
  for space photovoltaic arrays.

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• In the same way, similar learning curves, like
  Moores law, describe other dropping costs of
  technology with increasing volume, such as the
  low cost potential available to cut the cost of
  access to orbit if higher flight rates are
  achieved by reusable launch vehicles, especially
  private launch vehicles.
• A dozen other orbital space pioneers, led by Elon
  Musk and his reusable vehicle Falcon, are working
  to overcome policies and prices all but blocking
  new vehicle development in a dismally poor launch
  market outlook (due to high launch costs) with
  their new generation of private reusable launch
  vehicles.

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• Further legislation would provide an 85 launch
  subsidy to new private or public/ private
  businesses, such as SunSat Corp, which are
  contracting for space transportation and 50
  launch subsidy to established businesses
  contracting for space transportation.
• This would break the space development logjam of
  high launch costs.

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• Other reasonable requirements in this legislation
  might be that the launch must be to LEO or
  higher. Orbital transfer vehicles, to boost
  payloads from LEO to GSO, for example, should
  also qualify.
• New generation vehicles some already in design
  would drive the cost still lower as higher
  flight rates are quickly reached. Doubtless many
  other new space businesses would benefit.
• Sunsat Corp, however, would have one goal clean
  baseload solar energy from GSO to power planet
  earth.

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• When reaching full production, Sunsat Corp.
  would use approximately 42,000 flights per year
  to GSO, of ten metric tons each. By comparison,
  Atlantas Hartsfield-Jackson and Chicagos OHare
  International Airports each logged nearly a
  million takeoffs and landings in 2005. Prices
  would quickly fall once subsidies established
  market volume.

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Wireless Power Transfer (WPT) for an SSP system
would use radio waves to carry energy. In 1975,
William Brown of Raytheon first demonstrated
Ground-to-Ground WPT at JPLs Goldstone Facility.
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• On a larger scale there is tremendous
  similarity and technical overlap between SSP
  system designs and with some phased array systems
  that many companies in this room are helping to
  develop such as Space Radar.

Source Raytheon Company, Space Radar Overview -
www.raytheon.com/feature/stellent/groups/Public/do
cuments/image/cms04_010641.jpg
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• We need clean secure Space Solar Power
• Ground-based solar energy or wind power, has an
  average availability of 25-30 of a typical day
  due to night, rain, clouds, or wind too fast or
  too slow. Baseload power plants must be ready to
  immediately substitute for these plants in any of
  those conditions.
• Space solar power from GSO, however, is
  available continuously. While a typical baseload
  power plant is available 90 of the year, Space
  solar power would be available 99 of the year.
  There is no cleaner or more secure energy supply
  now available.

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• World oil production is at or near its peak
• Current world demand exceeds the supply.
  Once worldwide petroleum production peaks,
  geopolitics and market economics will result in
  even more significant price increases and
  security risks Oil wars are not out of the
  question. - Energy Trends and Implications for
  U.S. Army, by Fournier Westervelt, U.S. Army
  Corps of Engineers R D Center,
  www.defenseindustrydaily.com/files/2005-09_US_Army
  _Corps_of_Engineers_Energy_Trends.pdf
• Worry now, the problem is enormous. There will
  be massive shortages unless we act in time.
  Mitigation takes a long time. Peak oil is not a
  theory 33 out of 48 of the largest oil producing
  countries have hit peak. There is no warning for
  peak, as production goes up until the peak. The
  drop off is sudden. It will require more than a
  decade to transition our civilization away from
  our heavy dependence on oil. Nothing close to
  the efforts envisaged have yet begun. - Robert
  Hirsch, SAIC, testimony before Pentagon and U.S.
  Congress Committee on Energy and Commerce,
  http//energycommerce.house.gov/108/hearings/12072
  005Hearing1733/hearing.htm www.peakoil.net
  www.netl.doe.gov/otiic/World_Oil_Issues/Oil_Peakin
  g_NETL.pdf www.odac-info.org
• Rising CO2 from burning fossil fuels is wreaking
  havoc on our global ecosystems through climate
  change. We need to start weaning our world off
  fossil fuels.

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• Invest in clean secure solar energy from space -
  Space Solar Power!!
• SSP requires no fuel and has no operations
  personnel it is an antenna. 99 of the
  sunlight would pass through to working farmland
  underneath it.
• Overall SSP system efficiency is expected to be
  slightly over 50. A typical transmitting
  antenna diameter (in space) for a 1 GW SPS system
  is 1 km The rectenna on the ground would be
  about 4 km.

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• The Congress declares that it is the policy of
  the United States to establish, in conjunction
  and in cooperation with other countries, as
  expeditiously as practicable a commercial space
  solar power satellite system, as part of
  environmentally enhanced and improved global
  electric power generation and networks, which
  will be responsive to public needs and national
  objectives, which will serve the growing electric
  power needs of the United States and other
  countries, and which will contribute to world
  peace, understanding, harmony and increased
  sustainable electric power generation and
  economic development.
• - Preamble to the Sunsat Act

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Lets charter Sunsat Corporation!! Draft Sunsat
Act legislation is available at www.sspi.gatech.e
du/sunsat-how.pdf
FOR MORE INFO...
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Darel Preble, Chair, Space Solar Power
Workshop a 501(c)3 corporation www.sspi.gatech.edu
Office 770.603.4883 darel.preble_at_comcast.net o
r Mark Wallach, Chair, Space Solar Power
Association, a 501(c)4 corporation Office
216.622.8344 mwallach_at_calfee.com
FOR MORE INFO CONTACT...