Therefore, the uniform annual operations-and-maintenance cost for any year k, ignoring the inflation factor: The estimated operations and maintenance cost derived in Appendices H and I of 9 $/kW and 8 $/kW are negligible compared with the capital cost of the system and its annual charges. These cost estimates are relatively low because the design and development of the operational equipment must be such as to minimize the operations and particularly the maintenance equipment. The MPTS equipment is made up of essentially thousands of identical and simple components assembled in fault tolerant configurations. The operations and maintenance equipment would probably be much more complex than the equipment it is operating on and maintaining, thereby compounding the O and M problem. The total system must be developed and matured with one of the objectives being to require as little or at least as simple maintenance as possible. It is appropriate therefore to set low operational cost goals for operations and maintenance and put significant amounts of effort into the technology development of both the MPTS equipment and the associated operations and maintenance equipment to assure that the low operational costs are achieved. Curves relating specific energy cost to rate of return and build cycle time were developed and are shown in Appendix J, Figures J~9 and J-10 for ready reference. The energy cost for the complete 5 GW SPS system was computed for the range of power source and transportation-assembly factors noted in Figure 12-5, for annual return percentages ranging from 12 percent to 18 percent, and for medium or 50 percent cost factor of the MPTS. It was assumed that a lump sum funding was obtained for construction of the equipment and that a second lump funding was obtained for the launch vehicles and orbital operations at time of launch. The results, including direct capital cost, are shown in Figures 12-27 through 12-30 for the 58 percent system efficiency (initial) and for an assumed 72 percent system efficiency (goal) covering a range of values appropriate to
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