(currently, the arrays are heat transfer limited, so that active cooling may be required in the future to make the array less massive. In the cost summary, as in the mass, the figures are completely dominated by the cost of the transmitter array. The shown cost of 12.5 billion US dollars is based on the price used to estimate the cost of the array used in the near term demonstration discussed in another section of the report. The other dominant figure is the cost of the solar cells, which also should show dramatic improvement in the next decade. If a 100-fold improvement in phased array technology, and a 10-fold improvement is the array cost (and thus, the efficiency), then a much more modestly priced platform results. If the cost of the solid state phased array technology drops by only a factor of 20, then the cost of the array will be in the billion dollar class. From a mission perspective, the primary difficulty of the concept is related to the 28.5° low earth orbit. As previously discussed, this limits the time during which the a useful beam is received. Table 10.4.7 Concept 2 1 MW Commercial Pre-cursor Table 10.4.8 Mass and Cost Summaries for Concept 2
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