If the DDT&E phase runs smoothly, commitment to proceed with SPS construction on a commercial scale would require a four-year startup phase of procurement and deployment of launch facilities, launch vehicles, orbit-to-orbit vehicles, and space bases. Extensive launch and orbital operations would be involved in this phase, including major expansions of launch facilities. In the fourth phase, routine production of several power satellites and rectennas would take place each year. In the Reference System, two units of 5 GW electrical output would be completed each year until a total of sixty 5 GW units are in place. A fifth phase, decommissioning the entire system, is presumed to lie far in the future and has not been considered in this study. Most of the effort in this study focused on the third and fourth phases of the overall SPS program. It is also necessary to consider three distinct phases in the life cycle of a particular power satellite and rectenna: (1) the construction phase, when the power satellite and rectenna are being built; (2) the routine operations and maintenance (O&M) phase, lasting through the useful lifetime of a power satellite and rectenna, which is expected to be thirty years or more; (3) the decommissioning phase, when further repairs or modifications of the power satellite and/or rectenna are no longer economically advantageous, and the power satellite and/or rectenna is shut down and scrapped or salvaged for totally different purposes. (Note that the power satellite and the rectenna might be decommissioned at different times.) From the viewpoint of an individual power satellite and rectenna, we have considered only the first two phases in this study since the third phase lies too far in the future, although decommissioning could have significant military implications. Various types of organizational arrangements for the different phases of an overall SPS program have been discussed in previous studies. Obviously, the nature and national composition of the legal entities controlling, financing, owning, managing, or operating various segments of a Satellite Power System will have important effects on perceptions of threats posed by SPS and on perceptions of vulnerabilities of SPS.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==