0883-6272/86 + .00 Copyright ® 1986 SUNSAT Energy Council INTRODUCTION The Solar Power Satellite (SPS) Concept Revisited The following set of five papers were presented by Messrs. Dickinson, Glaser, Brown, Arndt, and Osepchuk at a special panel discussion session "The Solar Power Satellite (SPS) Concept Revisited” at the June 1984 International Symposium of the IEEE Antenna and Propagation Society in Boston, Massachusetts. Richard Dickinson also acted as Session Chairman. The session was organized by W. C. Brown and J. F. Lindsay, both IEEE Society representatives to the IEEE Energy Committee, in response to the recommendations in the 1980-1981 reviews of the "DOE/NASA Satellite Power System Concept Development and Evaluation Program” by the Office of Technology Assessment within Congress and the National Research Council. Both bodies recommended that the Solar Power Satellite Concept be periodically reviewed in the context of advances in generic technologies upon which the concept depends. The scope of the session included a microwave background paper by Richard Dickinson of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, an overall assessment report on the SPS by Peter Glaser of Arthur D. Little, Inc., a paper on environmental issues by John Osepchuk of Raytheon, a microwave application paper by Dickey Arndt and E. M. Kerwin of Johnson Space Center and a report on recent advances in microwave technology by William C. Brown of Raytheon. In the five years since the conclusion of the DOE/NASA study there have been many advances in transportation, solar cell, and microwave technologies that make the SPS technically and economically more practical. At the same time, the pollution-free aspects of SPS generated electric power are making it more attractive as a future energy source. It is to be expected that there will be growing interest in additional workshop sessions devoted to the SPS.
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