antenna, probably inside the standoff mast, and transported to the assembly site with some type of LTE. Power for antenna fabrication and assembly may be obtained from deployment of a portion of the solar array, which should be available by the time the antenna assembly begins. After construction has been completed, 22 percent of the arrays will be deployed to provide power to the MPD orbit transfer engine. A GEO space station and control center would be attached to and carried to GEO by the SPS and would receive the initial crew as soon as the SPS had passed the radiation zone. The crew would then begin deployment of the rest of the arrays. Since the blanket and reflector packages, guide wires, deployment cables, and winches have already been installed, this process simply requires activation of the winches and troubleshooting those that do not function properly. The SPS should therefore be ready to begin operation shortly after achieving proper GEO position and orientation. 9. 3. 3 MANUFACTURING AND CONSTRUCTION EQUIPMENT Table 9-6 lists the assembly equipment and the facilities, with their estimated weights, required to assemble an SPS, and Figure 9-11 shows some of them. The power mast construction equipment consists of a large ring (approximately 60 m in diameter) containing approximately 20 small beam forming devices for ''extruding" stringers and devices for winding and welding a ribbon of skin around the stringers. The skin may be multilayered to accommodate positive and negative current flow. Spools of skin and stringer material may be resupplied by free-flying remote controlled teleoperators. Structural beams for the solar arrays, dielectric structure, and antenna will be fabricated on-orbit by groups of machines similar to the one shown in Figure 9-11. Beams fabricated by these machines may be further assembled into larger beams by larger automatic machinery. Material for these devices will be delivered on spools or reels. The structural concept will require a highly automated manufacturing and assembly process. Fully automated manufacturing, delivery, assembly, and checkout systems, all designed to perform with a high degree of precision and reliability, will be required. All systems will be designed with a fail-safe philosophy. Free flyers, end effectors, manipulators, cable layers, etc., should be programmed with sufficient decision-making capability to normally operate without men in the loop. Tools and assembly techniques developed for the SPS assembly should find many applications in other space fabrication endeavors. Waveguides may have to be fabricated on orbit because of their low density and, if so, will require extremely precise equipment for forming, fastening, and drilling or punching. This equipment should probably be located on the standoff mast near the antenna. The antenna subarray assembly equip-
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