(676a) Space Solar Power: The Cornerstone for Sustainable Energy, Economy, and Environment

Our economy is strongly tied to the price of energy and our efficiency in using that energy to create value. In reaction to record oil and commodity prices, global economies have sunk into recession. Overextended on debt, people were increasingly squeezed by rising costs and declining real wages. Lending institutions are skittish and CEOs report record low confidence.

"The Oil Crunch" report, commissioned by 8 private UK companies projects a global oil peak production around 2012. Caltech's David Rutledge projects that we will have consumed half of the ultimate world oil, gas, and coal production by 2019 ? peaking fossil fuel production in the not distant future. http://www.its.caltech.edu/~rutledge/AGU%20abstract.pdf

A careful study of energy alternatives reveals only SSP can shoulder the massive and critical demands of our global Economy, Energy, and Environment. EIA's latest projections show the US continues doing nothing to address the massive fossil fuel shortfall and climate change problems we face. Sales of solar cells, for example, are expected to drop more than 20% this year.

Yet Space Solar Power, alone among current energy alternatives, has the capacity to become the cornerstone of Earth's energy supply ? virtually eliminating the problems associated with supply and generation to tap the sun directly, with only a rectifying antenna to receive the power from GeoSynchronous Orbit.

Just as Comsat was chartered by Congress to build communications satellites, Congress should charter a new company to build power satellites. We call this new public/private company Sunsat Corp. SSPS possesses many advantages, such as:

1. SSP is ?baseload? power - available 98% of the year from GSO. Energy storage, the Achilles heel of wind power and ground solar is not really needed, since the outages occur at local midnight during the equinoxes - minimum power conditions. A photovoltaic (PV) panel at GSO would collect 9.6 times as much power per day as the same panel at an average U.S. ground location. Considering storage and conversion losses, a ground PV or wind installation would need to collect another factor of about 9.6 to store power for just tomorrow ? assuming we need to provide for only one cloudy day.

2. SSP requires no fuel ? zero pollution ? and has no operations personnel. It is an antenna with green farms or ranches beneath the rectenna. SSP is the cleanest source of virtually unlimited baseload energy. Ground solar takes 100 times as much land usage to provide the same power as baseload SSP, similar to baseload power plants. Eventually Sunsat Corp could even provide much of its own fuel, through electromagnetic launch which even now could be used as a first stage.

3. SSP takes advantage of our historic investment in aerospace and other technical expertise to increase STEM jobs. SSP technology is near-term-available with multiple attractive approaches and would create millions of inspiring and important jobs. SSP would revitalize America by taking advantage of a multitude of space-development-related technologies that are vitally relevant to our current problems, including

space transportation

telerobotics

photovoltaics

control systems

communications

aerospace engineering

wireless power transfer

environmental science including

?space weather? knowledge

4. Unlike oil, gas, ethanol, bio-fuel, and coal, SSP emits no CO2 - it is a rectenna. Rising CO2 drives climate change, compounding our massive environmental problems with slowly declining global nutrition, since most plants, such as rice and wheat, are critically dependent on CO2 levels, and each plant, with its pests, responds differently. Weather changes from drought to hurricanes, we are still struggling to properly model.

5. Today's average coal-fired power plant withdraws 25,000 gallons of river water to provide an average household with 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month; 31,000 gallons if nuclear-fired. Waste heat is one of many problems with such baseload power plants. In drought conditions--a growing problem from California to the Carolinas--warming water from power plant exhaust has reduced power or shut down some power plants. Output water must be carefully monitored, especially in summer, to avoid fish kills from dangerously higher water temperatures. SSP cuts waste heat by about 80% and water use by 100%.

6. SSP would reduce competition for many other scarce resources besides water. Advanced thin-film space photovoltaic material now can generate 16.8 Kw/kg ? using just one hundredth as much material as ground-type PV panels.

7. Unlike bio-ethanol or bio-diesel, SSP does not compete for increasingly valuable natural-gas-derived fertilizer. Corn can continue to be a major export instead of a fuel to burn, while raising the prices of foods and other commodities.

8. Liquid fuels can be made from SSP power, such as anhydrous ammonia which can be moved through the same pipelines as gasoline. We have been making liquid ammonia for 50 years for farming; it also fueled the X-15 rocket plane. It can use existing piping, unlike ethanol. Synthetic fuels, electric hybrid vehicles and the electrification of our transportation system are all natural extensions of SSP's beneficial impact.

Our global economy would be greatly stimulated by the realization of SSP. Many other space businesses and jobs would be enabled by SSP's low launch costs - from space mining to new telescopes on the quiet side of the Moon.

A Space Solar Power System (SSPS) with reasonable assumptions about shading, collection and beaming efficiency, etc., could collect 3000 Terawatts at GSO and inject 1500 Terawatts to contracting power grids. Rectennas would actually be owned by local utilities, built in consultation with Sunsat's marketing and rectenna owner/operators group, SPARCO. Sunsat Corp would be a multinational super-utility, similar to existing multinationals in other industries, such as Intelsat. A draft ten year budget for this new public/private company Sunsat Corp, which the Space Solar Power Workshop has been constructed, illustrating how such a company could transition from the current dynamic market conditions to profitable SSPS business conditions, providing the energy keystone for a favorable future global energy, environment and economy.