April 30,2004Space Solar Power Workshop1 The SSP Business Case: How Leading Edge Technologies are Ready for Space Solar Power International Space Development

April 30,2004 Space Solar Power Workshop 1

The SSP Business Case:How Leading Edge Technologies are

Ready forSpace Solar Power

International Space Development Conference

June 1, 2008 Washington, D.C.

Darel Preble chair, Space Solar Power Workshop www.sspi.gatech.edu


America’s energy security and global environment are at risk

• These threats are imminent - in the time frame required to address them.

• Nothing is being done on the scale and time frame required.

• SSP is the most important clean baseload energy source - with the potential to strongly address our energy, environment and related problems with a magnificent alternative.


Peaking Oil Dr. Robert Hirsch finds the most current and authoritative

research predicts peak global oil production between 2008 and 2018: "In a worst-case scenario, global oil production may reach its peak in 2008, before starting to decline. In a best-case scenario, this peak would not be reached until 2018.” “Giant Oil Fields – Highway to Oil”, dissertation, F. Robelius, Uppsala University, 2007.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070330100802.htm and www.peakoil.net/GiantOilFields.html

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070330100802.htm

http://www.peakoil.net/GiantOilFields.html


“Dean of Oil Analysts”, Charles Maxwell, Weeden & Co important interviews are at: ‘Dean of Oil Analysts’ Maxwell (4 Part Series)

http://energytechstocks.com.previewmysite.com/wp/?p=847

Part 1 of 4: Oil Shortages Start in 2010; Peak Oil Hits 2012-2015

Part 2 of 4: U.S. Pump Prices to Hit $12 to $15 a Gallon

Part 3 of 4: ‘Deep Oil’ Drillers Like Pride Should Do Well

Part 4 of 4: Oil Crisis Will Lead to 10-Year Financial & Political Crisis


Peaking Coal

The most current and authoritative research predicts peak

global coal production by 2025. - "Peak coal by 2025 say researchers", initiated by a German member of Parliament. Authors: Dr. Werner Zittel and Jörg Schindler

www.energywatchgroup.org/files/Coalreport.pdf and www.energybulletin.net/28287.html

http://www.energywatchgroup.org/files/Coalreport.pdf

http://www.energybulletin.net/28287.html


Forget oil, the new global crisis is food

BMO strategist Donald Coxe warns credit crunch and soaring oil prices will pale in comparison to looming catastrophe - A new crisis is emerging, a global food catastrophe that will reach further and be more crippling than anything the world has ever seen. The credit crunch and the reverberations of soaring oil prices around the world will pale in comparison to what is about to transpire, Donald Coxe, global portfolio strategist at BMO Financial Group "It's not a matter of if, but when," he warned investors. "It's going to hit this year hard." - Financial Post,, January 03, 2008, www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=213343


Skyrocketing Materials Prices

April 9, 2008 - Japan's three biggest steel makers -- Nippon Steel Corp., JFE Holdings Inc.'s JFE Steel unit and Sumitomo Metal Industries Ltd. -- all accepted Australian miner BHP Billiton Ltd.'s offer to supply coking coal at $300 per ton for fiscal 2008, up from $98 last year.

Influential power producer Chubu Electric Power agreed to pay Swiss mining firm Xstrata $125 per metric ton of Australian thermal coal this fiscal year, more than double the $55 per ton paid last year. Earlier this year a 65% increase in iron-ore prices was absorbed. The price hikes increase inflationary pressure on finished goods. - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120773119565901329.html

http://online.wsj.com/quotes/main.html?type=djn&symbol=5401.TO


The Energy, Food & Environment view ahead is disastrous!!


The best we’ve got – SSP – is unfunded - still in the pits!!


What are our alternatives?

Clean? Safe? Reliable? Baseload?

Fossil Fuel No Yes Peak Imminent Yes

Nuclear No Yes Fuel limited Yes

Wind Power Yes Yes No, intermittent No

Geothermal Yes Yes No, Limited Yes

Ground Solar Yes Yes No, intermittent No

Hydro Yes Yes No; drought; complex scheduling

Bio-fuels Yes Yes Very limited quantities - competes with food production.

SSP Yes Yes Yes Yes


Conservation

CarpoolingNew LED and compact flourescent lightingEnergy efficient appliancesAdding insulation to walls and ceiling

Electrifying our transportation system

Hybrid/electric cars & trucksLight rail & subwaysElectric trains


So How do we build SSP?

No company(s) or agency(s), however, is prepared to assume the immense financial risk of initiating construction of an SSPS.

There are simply too many engineering, financial, regulatory and managerial risks for any group we have been able to identify to undertake SSP today.

But this road has been well traveled by America before ...


There is a tried and true vehicle, that could initiate SSP construction today.

A private Congressionally chartered corporation has all the requisite advantages. Comsat Corp., chartered in 1962, opened space for communication satellites - when we knew little about space, rockets or space communications. As a result, communications satellites are now a $100 + Billion industry per year. The “Sunsat Act” could accomplish the same task, creating a space solar power industry of much greater size.


Congress should charter a new corporation, Sunsat Corp. to build power satellites. Draft legislation for Sunsat, very much like Comsat, would have all the requisite advantages. We recommend that congress charter Sunsat Corp soon. It is the foundation of our new energy industry!!

The electric power industry is the most capital intensive business in the world. This is why utilities are generally regulated monopolies – because ownership of major power plants is really a public trust. Sunsat must be organized the same way. It would be the first super-utility selling “wholesale” only to other utilities.


Why we should build Space Solar Power

1. SSP can take advantage of our current and historic investment in aerospace expertise to increase STEM jobs. SSP’s technologies are near-term and have multiple attractive approaches, and can create many thousands of STEM jobs, on inspiring and important work.

2. Unlike coal and nuclear plants, SSP does not compete for or depend on scarce fresh water resources. Various liquid fuels, such as anhydrous ammonia, can be made and moved through the same pipeline system as gasoline. It is 111 octane, whereas corn-based ethanol has a very low octane and cannot be moved through existing pipes. We have been making and using liquid ammonia for 50 years for farming - and also fueling the X-15 rocket!



3. Unlike coal, oil, gas, ethanol, and bio-fuel engines, SSP emits no CO2 - only an antenna (“rectenna”) is on the Earth receiving clean energy.

4. Unlike bio-ethanol or bio-diesel, SSP does not compete for increasingly valuable farm land or depend on natural-gas-derived fertilizer. Corn can continue to be a major export instead of fuel to burn.

5. Unlike nuclear power plants, SSP produces no hazardous waste, does not encourage proliferation of nuclear weapons and materials.

6. Unlike coal and nuclear fuels, SSP has no environmentally problematic mining and waste issues.



7. Unlike terrestrial solar and wind power plants, SSP is available 24/7, in endless quantities. SSP ignores cloud cover, night, storms, dust and wind. Space Solar Power is “baseload” available 99% of the year from GeoSynchronous Orbit. (Typical nuclear or coal plants, are actually available only 90% of the year.) SPS requires no fuel and has no operations personnel – it is an antenna – with farms underneath. SSP is the cleanest source of virtually unlimited baseload energy.

8. SSP can provide energy independence for the nations that develop it, eliminating global competition for limited Earth-based energy resources and dependence on unstable, hostile and declining foreign oil providers.

9. SSP can be easily “exported” anywhere in the world.



10. With lower cost space transportation, many new opportunities and business ventures in space become easier: telescopes on the backside of the Moon; mining interests are ready now to capture Near-Earth-Objects; the Moon could become a materials provider for many projects; Protection of SSP will also be needed.

[Numerous lunar development projects become more doable. Led by a Lunar Development Authority many other opportunities open; conceivably commercial products from the Moon could be sold to Sunsat Corp.] The highway to the future begins with chartering Sunsat Corp, inspiring our children with a real and bright future again.



11. SSP would revitalize America by showing that a multitude of space-development-related educational fields, from telerobotics to space transportation, from wireless power transfer to photovoltaics and environmental sciences, are vitally relevant to our huge problems. Reduced launch costs, the key enabler, will provide unprecedented access to space and space operations beginning with clean, baseload SSP - reliable power delivery and global energy security at greatly reduced environmental impact.



12. SSP requires low cost orbital space transportation – about a factor of ten lower than today’s best price. Only SSP can provide a market large enough to develop the low-cost space transportation systems required to enable the SSP business case. SSP won’t happen with business as usual assumptions, we need the Sunsat Act. We will not “drift” to SSP. The FAA 2007 Commercial Space Transportation Forecast forecasts a declining launch market. Sunsat Corp must incentivize the orbital market fleet it needs to close the business case.

13. And SSP can provide much of its own clean fuel to orbit using electromagnetic launch!!

Choosing to charter an SSP corporation would be another “ small step for man, a giant leap for mankind.”


Last year we saw Ian McNab’s, University of Austin, electromagnetic launch systems for aircraft carriers - pioneering low cost launch systems.


Credit NASA• Space qualified thin-film solar cells ready to manufacture

today can provide solar cells adequate to begin SSP design and construction now!

• Kevin Reed / Harvey Willenburg Welsom Space Consortium will speak on “Commercial demonstration of Space Solar Power using

ultra-light-weight photovoltaic arrays”

Since space transportation is expensive, SSP requires high performance photovoltaic cells. More power output from less weight placed in orbit.


NASA technologies can provide further great value to our nation in enabling the telerobotic construction of Space Solar Power. Eric Baumgartner, co-winner of the 2008 IEEE Prize for Robotics recently “graduated” from JPL’s highly successful Mars Exploration Rover (MER) spacecraft program and is currently Dean of the T. J. Smull College of Engineering in Ohio Northern University. He will speak on

“Robotic Construction Technologies for Space Solar Power Systems”.

ASTRO Captures NextSat

On July 23, 2007, for the first time, Boeing’s Orbital Express system autonomously rendezvoused with and captured another orbiting satellite, successfully demonstrated advanced on-orbit satellite refueling & reconfiguration capabilities.


the customer - who will choose the best and most appropriate of these for their special power delivery situation. We are honored to have Seth Potter, associate technical fellow at Boeing who will present:

“Wireless Power Transmission Options for Space Solar Power” …

Delivering Power from Space

Wireless Power Transfer was first demonstrated in 1975. Today our understanding of Wireless Power Transfer capabilities is growing to provide other clean safe SSP energy delivery alternatives to the utility -


and the markets a utility serves outline possible delivery options. Providing several clean power delivery alternatives to a customer is critical. They need better choices today to match their customer’s “crazy” power requirements. Eric Hoffert, CEO of Versatility Engineering and Versatility Software, is here to provide one such important capability. He is presenting

“A Fundable Demonstration Platform Delivering Electricity to Earth via Solar Powered Lasers in Space”

Delivering Power from Space - 2

A typical large utility may have hundreds of rates or tariffs. These are dictated by fishing lobbies, weather patterns, environmental needs, and attacks by terrorists - like squirrels. Our knowledge of physics



FOR MORE INFO...

Sunsat Act Draft legislation available at: www.sspi.gatech.edu/sunsat-how.pdf

Learn more at www.sspi.gatech.eduEmail: [email protected]

And many other resources such as: www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/sspvideo.htm

http://www.sspi.gatech.edu/

http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/sspvideo.htm

Documents

April 30,2004Space Solar Power Workshop1 The SSP Business Case: How Leading Edge Technologies are Ready for Space Solar Power International Space Development