III. BRIEF SATELLITE POWER STATION CONCEPT DESCRIPTION In 1968, Dr. Peter Glaser of Arthur D. Little, Inc., proposed a solar photovoltaic satellite for the generation of power to be used on earth. This concept has been developed and refined under a series of studies sponsored by NASA's Lewis Research Center and Marshall Space Flight Center and largely conducted by a team comprised of Arthur D. Little, Grumman, Raytheon, Spectrolab, and ECON. The Boeing Company has proposed a solar thermal conversion system which is an outgrowth of their work for ERDA and the Electric Power Research Institute on land-based solar energy systems. Boeing has been assisted in its studies, which have been expanded to include nuclear power generation and reflecting systems, by AiResearch and the Georgia Institute of Technology. Krafft A. Ehricke of Rockwell International first suggested the power relay satellite (PRS) as well as nuclear power satellites and large orbiting mirrors to reflect sunlight onto the night side of the earth at selected locations. All these concepts and several others have also been studied independently to various depths by the Johnson Space Center, the Marshall Space Flight Center, the Ames Research Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and NASA Headquarters, resulting at the present time in essentially four satellite system concepts which may be identified as follows: (1) Solar Photovoltaic (2) Solar Thermal (3) Nuclear (4) Power Relay The first concept is generally referred to as the satellite solar power system (SSPS), the next two are often called Powersat and include not only the two power sources but several conversion methods as well. The final concept is referred to as the Power Relay Satellite (PRS). These concepts as well as the related Reflective Systems and Supporting Terrestrial Systems are described in the following six subsections. The objective of these descriptions is to summarize current NASA work in this area. Their presentation here implies no endorsement by ERDA.
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