0883-6272/86 $3.00 + .00 Copyright ' 1986 SUNSAT Energy Council STATUS OF THE USE OF MICROWAVE POWER TRANSMISSION TECHNOLOGY IN THE SOLAR POWER SATELLITE William C. Brown, Consultant Microwave Power Transmission Systems Weston, Massachusetts 02193, U.S.A. ABSTRACT In the last five years (1980-1985) significant progress has been made in the resolution of important problems in the space portion of the microwave system in the Solar Power Satellite. In addition, LEO to GEO transportation costs for the SPS can be dramatically reduced by utilizing a ground-based microwave beam to supply power to electrically propelled Interorbital vehicles. These two advances are largely the result of the adaptation of basic technology derived from studies of electronically-steerable microwave power beams for high altitude microwave powered aircraft and the development of a low mass rectenna for such aircraft. INTRODUCTION History may very well find the Solar Power Satellite concept to have been one of the major technological and societal developments of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. When introduced by Peter Glaser in 1968^, the concept of converting the sun’s nearly continuous radiant energy in geosynchronous orbit into electrical power and transporting it to earth on a microwave beam was immediately recognized as a potential solution to serious emerging world pollution problems associated with conventional means of producing base load electrical power^. Subsequently, in 1974, a shortage of' petroleum supplies and a temporary shortage of energy added additional interest in the concept. Now, again, there is interest in the SPS as a source of pollution-free electric power as the world becomes more aware of the potential of burning fossil fuel to produce near-term changes in climate. The impact of the solar power satellite concept should be recognized, however, as more than a future potential source of pollution-free, base-load electrical power, important as that is. It should also be recognized as an important lever to open up the full development of space through the bold and necessary responses to meet the technological and economic challenges of the SPS concept. Many of the requirements for the economic success of the SPS are also those needed for the general economic exploitation of space. For example, a low cost transportation system is needed between LEO and GEO if SPS’s are to be built from material obtained from the earth. But such a transportation system is also needed to place substantial industrial installations on the moon. At the conclusion in 1980 of the study of the SPS sponsored by the United States Department of Energy and the National Air and Space Administration in which great progress was made in defining the technology needed for the SPS and in conceptualizing various approaches to the major sub- systems^, it was the recommendation in two government agency reviews2* that the technological and economic feasibility of the SPS be periodically reviewed in terms of advances in the generic technologies from which the SPS is composed. Now, five years later, this paper addresses the advances that have been made in microwave power transmission technology and their Impact upon the feasibility of the SPS. The results of the DOE/NASA study of the microwave power transmission subsystem^ of the SPS set into motion other applications of microwave power transmission^ which, as they conceptually Ip.E. Glaser, "Power from the Sun; Its Future," Science, Vol. 162, pp. 857-861, Nov. 22, 1968. ^E. Stuhlinger, "Power without pollution - a dream that must come true," Special Issue on ’Satellite Solar Power Station*, Journal Microwave Power, Vol. 5, No. 4, Dec. 1970. ^"The final proceedings of the solar power satellite program review," Conf-800491, DOE Contract No. FG05-79ER10116 - July 1980. ^Reports by U.S. National Research Council and Congressional Office of Technology Assessement. $W.C. Brown, "Satellite power system (SPS) magnetron tube assessment study," Contract No. NAS8-33157, NASA Contractor Rep. 3383, Feb. 1981. ^W.C. Brown, "Design study for a ground microwave power transmission system for use with a high-altitude powered platform," NASA Contractor Rep. 168344, June, 1983, Raytheon Rep. PT-6052, Contract NAS5-3200, May, 1982.
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