It’s the 5th day of SPS…
With Volume 5 of the SUNSAT Energy Council’s Space Solar Power Review.
In 1984 the council did not publish the journal, but a year later it was back with two special editions personally introduced by Professor Makoto Nagatomo: Number 2 Featured papers from the 1984 Space Energy Symposium from the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS, the core research organization that was merged into JAXA), and Number 4 does the same to bring translated papers to the west from the 1985 ISAS Space Energy Symposium.
Plus, Number 1 and 3 bring you still functionally relevant articles from Peter Glaser, David Criswell, Gerald Griffin and more.
A special note:
It very often still happens when folks are newly exposed to the concepts of Space-Based Solar Power / Solar Power Satellites that there is an instant jump to the idea that SPS will fry all of Earth’s birds. Obviously, that is not a goal of the work.
There have been many (many) studies on potential negative effects on fauna (and flora), not just on the 2.45GHz power beaming but even on any effects that minor transient flashes of reflection off of the edges of a SPS satellite might have on circadian rhythm, hibernation phases and migration patterns of wildlife. Oh yeah, and on the effects to terrestrial Astronomers.
Examples of such studies – that surprisingly things like Starlink never had to go through – are in the SSI government reports collection and in today’s release of SUNSAT’s journal Volume 5 Number 3. Note the the article “The Effect Of Microwave Radiation (2.45GHz CW) On The Molt Of House Finches (Carpodacus Mexicanus)” by Fred Wasserman, Trevor Lloyd-Evans, Sam Battista, David Byman, Thomas Kunz.
Some people today say that it is “better” to just go and do without fully testing first and then see who cries. We hear that all the time when we bring up what we see as the significant need for a G-Lab LEO Spin Hab. Probably the “best” idea is somewhere in the middle, but ignoring those edge cases (that you really know are there) is never a good idea.
To get to today’s release of the four issues of Volume 5 of SUNSAT’s Space Solar Power Review, Click Right Here.
