SATELLITE POWER SYSTEMS (SPS): THE NEED FOR A DETAILED ASSESSMENT TO DEVELOP FEASIBLE MANAGEMENT SCHEMES Michael S. Kaplan Physical Science Policy Analyst - Program Analysis Division U. S. General Accounting Office - 441 G Street NW, Rm. 5037, Washington, D.C. 20548 (202) 275-1551 Thei paper reflects personal views, not necessarily those of the US General Accouning Office The Satellite Power System (SPS), a concept which is currently under review by the Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), represents a new technology which could be available to supply a fraction of our country's energy needs by the early portion of the next century. Studies conducted by the U. S. General Accounting Office often raise the issue of the capability of program management to effectively manage a very large program. Preliminary assessments by both DOE and NASA indicate that the SPS program could be among the most massive and complex initiatives ever undertaken. Besides presenting a variety of technical challenges to our nation's scientists and engineers, the SPS program's enormous costs (dollars and labor) and impacts require us to go beyond considering the concept's technical, environmental, economic, and social feasibility. Many institutional and organizational obstacles exist which will have to be overcome for the SPS program to be a success (Figure 1). To grasp the enormity of the task of constructing a satellite solar power station, it is informative to compare the SPS program to one of the nation's most impressive achievements in high-technology -- Project Apollo. The Apollo program involved the expenditure of $20 billion over a ten year period while involving 80 nations and employing some 400,000 people at over 20,000 industrial concerns and 200 universities. The success of Project Apollo was the direct result of extraordinary technical effort coupled with revolutionary methods in program management. In both the planning and in the integration and control of the Apollo program, management's effectiveness in dealing effectively with complexity was truly remarkable. Thus if we are to believe that the SPS program can represent a viable source of energy for the US by the 21st Century, we must realize that new breakthroughs are needed in very large program management. This is a consequence of the belief that the SPS program will be at least an order of magnitude larger and several orders of magnitude more complex than the Apollo program. Because of our lack of experience in managing such a large and complex program as SPS, we must develop radically different management concepts to support the program. Cybernetics, the science of communication and control, can play a major role in the assessment of both the adequacy of current managerial approaches and techniques as well as assist in the design and development of new potential organizational structures and institutional relationships (Figure 2). Use of cybernetics allows us to conduct technological programs which are extremely complex by designing metaorganizational structures. Of particular importance is the potential for cybernetics to assist in the design of "metasystems" that can adapt to a dynamic and complex environment while retaining their desire and capability to progress toward some predefined goal and/or objective. Hence, more detailed study of potential SPS management structures
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