7.2 RECOMMENDATIONS The recommendations which are judged by the study team to be most important are presented first. There should be a strong effort to find and characterize a structural material which has very low coefficient of thermal expansion and which can be made from lunar material. Such a material is vital to construction of the SPS microwave antenna, and would be useful in other structural applications. Recent work on lunar concrete is promising, and should be encouraged. A glass-metal composite would probably be ideal. The microwave lens concept reported in this study should be verified and investigated. If valid, this concept could greatly improve SPS economics. The GaAs concentrator design should be thoroughly optimized. It may be possible to reduce both the total mass and the non-lunar mass by more than half. This would make the GaAs design more economical than silicon planar, if silicon cannot be repeatedly annealed or if manufacture of silicon cells in space proves to be very costly. Moving belt radiator technology should be followed closely. If an MBR can be built from lunar material, it has potential to greatly reduce the mass of all the power conversion systems which require active cooling. TPV and Stirling technologies should be followed. Major improvements are possible in either of these technologies, and could make TPV or Stirling strong candidates for SPS power conversion. This is especially true if a lightweight lunar radiator such as the MBR can be developed.
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