SPECIFIC SPS CONSTRUCTION STUDIES: OPERATIONS AND MAINTENANCE Keith H. Miller Boeing Aerospace Company, P.O. Box 3999, Seattle, Washington 98124 The overall scope of the Solar Power Satellite program operations is depicted in Figure 1. These operations involve many surface as well as in-space operations. In this discussion, we will take a look at these operations using the 12th year of commercial operations as a model. During this time period, the primary end products of SPS industrial enterprise are the following: 1) operation and maintenance of 20 satellites, 2) completion of a new SPS and its ground receiving antenna every 6 months, and 3) construction of electric cargo orbital transfer vehicles (EOTVs) at the rate of one vehicle every 45 days. EOTV's are not constructed every year of SPS operations; we have selected a year including EOTV construction for completeness. During the 12th year of commercial SPS operations, the industrial infrastructure will be producing the materials and components required to support the space construction and ground receiving station construction operations. Studies have shown that the production of photovoltaic cells and blankets will be the most significant new industrial enterprise. Certain other subsystems will require the development of significant new industrial capacity, but the SPS demand seems reasonably comparable with projected capacity to serve other markets. Most of the components can be shipped by rail or truck. A couple of very large components will have to be shipped by barge or ship. Each ground receiving station includes the land area, rectenna, utility interface equipment, and control and communications systems. The land sites are 13.2 x 18.7 km (nominal at 35° latitude) and each rectenna is 9.9 x 14 km. Each ground receiving station would be constructed over a 24 month period. Four of these sites would be in work simultaneously so that the receiving stations are brought on-line at the rate of one every 6 months (the same as the SPS construction rate). Satellite components and propellants are delivered to the launch site at the Kennedy Space Center. Heavy lift launch vehicles are loaded with 1 million pound payloads. There will be 1 or 2 launches each day from three off-shore launch pads. Space crews are launched by a dedicated vehicle. The cargo and crews are delivered to a low Earth orbit staging base (the LEO Base shown in Figure 2). Some of the cargo and crew remain at this base where electric orbital transfer vehicles (EOTV's) will be constructed at the rate of one vehicle every 45 days. The majority of cargo is transferred to an EOTV which is flying in formation with the base. The EOTV's will deliver the cargo to the geosynchronous Earth orbit base (the GEO Base). Crews will be delivered to GEO by dedicated personnel orbit transfer vehicles (POTVs). There will be approximately 230 people at this base. The GEO base is shown in Figure 3. This base is used to construct the solar power satellites, and to support the SPS maintenance operations. The SPS construction operations are conducted at a rate to produce a new satellite every 6 months. The solar array portion of the satellite and the antenna are constructed simultaneously in the two main construction areas on the base. The satellite maintenance operations include two primary sub-operations: 1) The
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