41 parameters off of Mankins and Sasaki (e.g., distance to Earth, solar panel size, illumination, radiofrequency, and capacity factor). The practice of scaling total system mass to solar cell efficiency comes from earlier literature (Mankins, SPS-ALPHA: The First Practical Solar Power Satellite via Arbitrarily Large Phased Array, 2012). Based on the scaling factor and solar panel size from Mankins and Sasaki, we calculated the total solar panel surface area. We then applied the solar constant (NASA, 2023) to determine the incident solar energy. Based on the power delivered, distance, and beam frequency from Mankins and Sasaki, Aerospace inferred the diameter of the ground rectenna receptor for each system. Changes to the angle of incident solar energy over the year were not evaluated, nor were changes in capacity factor from having multiple systems in space for RD2. The following is a summary of major losses of efficiency for each functional step: • Collect: solar cell efficiency (35%) • Convert in-space: solar energy to microwave radiation (DC-DC 90% and DC-RF 70%) • Transmit: antenna emission (90%), atmospheric travel (98%), and beam collection (95%) • Receive: rectenna array reception (78%) • Convert on-ground: DC-DC (90%) Taking the scaling factor for each system and inefficiencies into account, and incorporating each system’s capacity factor, results in final power delivery of approximately 2 GW (or about 13% of the incident solar energy). ConOps Phases We further break each system into five ConOps phases to evaluate costs by each phase of the full operational lifecycle. Evaluating costs by ConOps phase also allows us to estimate capital expenditures (CapEx) and fixed operations and management (FOM) costs, which we use in the next section to compare the cost of different renewable energy technologies. Table 6. Functional Decomposition of Design Reference Systems for the Space-Based Segment Space-Based Segment Functional Step Parameter RD1 RD2 Source Collect Distance to Earth surface (km) 35,786.00 35,786.00 Mankins, Sasaki Scaling factor 0.77 5 Calculated Solar panel size (km2) 11.473 19 Mankins, Sasaki Solar panel surface area (m2) 11,473,000.00 19,000,000.00 Calculated Solar Constant (w/m2) 1,367.50 1,367.50 NASA Incident solar energy (MW) 15,689.33 25,982.50 Calculated
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTU5NjU0Mg==