Faculty Preface The International Space University (ISU) held its 1992 summer session from June 16 to August 26 in Kitakyushu, Japan. ISU was hosted by the city of Kitakyushu. This is the fifth summer session since the inception of the International Space University summer sessions in 1988 at MIT. The ISU summer sessions consist of ten weeks of intense multidisciplinary lectures and workshops spanning all aspects of space studies. Introductory and advanced lectures are given in nine subjects: Space Architecture, Space Business & Management, Space Engineering, Space Life Sciences, Space Policy & Law, Space Resources & Manufacturing, Satellite Applications, Space Physical Sciences, and the Space Humanities program. In addition to the ISU core curriculum and advanced lecture program, each ISU summer session includes one or more design projects. Spanning a portion of the ten week session, each ISU design project serves as a time-compressed simulation of a complete space design project. The purpose of the project is to give the students an opportunity to apply knowledge gained in ISU lectures and to participate in a multidisciplinary team endeavor with challenging technical, social and economic factors. The interaction among individual students, their work teams, and the external experts and faculty provides each student with a broad overview of a large project which is usually only obtained after years of experience. Typically only project managers, directors and corporate executives have the opportunity to see the “big picture” which the students of ISU achieve. This experience is the first and principal “product” of an ISU design project. The second product of the ISU '92 Space Solar Power Program design project is this report. In it, the students describe a development plan for space solar power. The design project responds to a growing perception in the space solar power research community that building a fleet of giant solar power satellites as envisioned in the 1970s is too costly and difficult a project for a first step. People have begun to realize that a systematic research and development program will have to be implemented in order to learn how to install solar power stations in space and to assess their potential for cost effective power production. Many demonstration projects have been proposed, but few institutions or agencies have looked at these to determine what the progression of projects should be to get from where we are now to global use of space solar power. For the Space Solar Power Project, the students were specifically asked not to create a point design of a large solar power satellite system. Instead, they were asked to build a development plan and, as part of this plan, to look at possible near and mid term demonstrations of space solar power technology. The work is unique, since such an overall plan — incorporating business, environmental, legal, technical, and other factors — has never been attempted. A set of possible demonstration projects has been examined by the students. A few of these have been worked out in some detail and others are left for future study. The early demonstrations could be deployed for technology validation and possibly to supply commercially useful amounts of power to other spacecraft. These demonstrations are possible steps to assess the overall viability of solar power plants capable of providing a significant amount of power to Earth. The report covers many aspects of space solar power in addition to the engineering. For example, it addresses major political questions associated with frequency allocation for microwave power beaming, and discusses the environmental issues which must be understood before space solar power can become widely accepted. Although the students have only limited time to work on such a large design project during a 10 week summer session, there are some creative ideas in this report and we have learned of new challenges that will have to be faced in the implementation of a Space Solar Power Program. We believe this report is a valuable addition to the literature on space solar power and will serve as a starting point for future research.
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