At present costs of approximately $80,000 per kilowatt delivered at the solar blanket, total capital costs would be increased by a factor of 30 to 80 times. Clearly, the reduction of the cost of photovoltaic conversion by at least 2+ orders of magnitude is critical to economic viability. d. Transportation Costs 6 The delivery into orbit of over 40 million pounds (18 x 10 kg) plus required assembly and inter-orbit transportation requirements also will require substantial cost reductions from present levels if the projected system is to be competitive. Even with substantial costs reductions, transportation costs will account for as much as 43 percent of total system capital costs (Ref. All). The three major issues here are: (1) the cost per pound to transport mass to low orbit (LEO), (2) the mass to be lifted, and (3) the packing density in the launch vehicle. Target values for the cost/lbm are $40-100 (Ref. All) which represent substantial reductions from estimated space shuttle costs in the range of $200-300. Few, if any, point estimates of unit cost are given since substantial variation is associated with: • Vehicle cost • Proportion of vehicle cost recovered for reuse • Number of flights per vehicle • Total number of flights and/or vehicles over which to spread the substantial fleet support costs. Projected cost ranges include $18-45/lbm (Ref. A9) and $51-194/lbm (Ref. All). To achieve the desired costs, the literature clearly indicates the need for a new type of massive Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle (HLLV) with as many as 100 flights (reuses) per vehicle and launch frequencies as high as 300 per year. These assumptions clearly create the presumption of a large number of satellite systems over which to spread the required transportation investment. Total transportation cost also depends on total mass to be launched into LEO, which is itself a complex calculation. One treatment, the
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