32 b. Given the existing commercial interest and activity in developing the necessary technologies, NASA and DoE could jointly assemble a consortium to support and guide maturation of these technologies. c. Given that many more commercial companies are developing SBSP-relevant technologies for non-SBSP applications, such as power beaming and solar cell advances, we recommend collaboration with DoE and industry. d. NASA could hold challenges and workshops to improve designs and develop better understanding of the required development paths. e. NASA could advocate for the U.S. Government to create public-private entity with NASA as one of several Government shareholders to guide the development and implementation of SBSP. 7.0 Conclusion and Recommended Further Study Our first-order assessment has shown that two notional SBSP systems, using existing or near-term technology, are very expensive but may produce GHG emissions comparable to existing renewable electricity production technologies. Some major drivers of cost and GHG emissions for SBSP include launch, space hardware manufacturing, disposal of massive satellites, and in-space assembly of large systems. However, our sensitivity analyses demonstrated that there are ways to significantly drive down the cost and emissions of SBSP systems. Specific opportunities that could also benefit a wide range of future NASA missions include using EP for transfer to the desired orbit, significantly decreasing the cost of access to space, improving solar cell efficiency, and improving manufacturing learning curves. A combination of such improvements would make SBSP systems competitive with other renewable energy systems on both cost and GHG emissions metrics. Our work identified several policy and technology challenges that would need to be addressed to advance SBSP. While these challenges are not unique to SBSP systems, the scale required to fully implement an SBSP system requires forethought. We therefore recommend that NASA conduct follow-on assessments on the following items: 1. More detailed technical evaluations of SBSP – SBSP would benefit from a more detailed analysis of: 1) lifecycle cost and GHG emissions, as performed by NREL on other electricity production technologies; and 2) exploration mission applications of SBSP in the form of a cost benefit analysis and a detailed NASA technical design trade evaluation. The latter may also consider emerging partnership efforts for in-situ resource utilization, such as NASAfunded work to produce solar cells on the Moon (NASA, 2023). 2. Regulatory Challenges – SBSP faces several regulatory hurdles, including spectrum allocation, orbital slots, and launch approvals, that will need to be addressed given the competition for these limited resources and the complexity of proposed SBSP systems.
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