Fig. I. Diagram of low earth orbit (LEO) to geosynchronous earth orbit (GEO) orbital transfer. Up times for transfer from LEO to GEO, tup, and from GEO to LEO, tdown are also given. ions in the upper ionosphere, the plasmasphere and the outer magnetosphere that is the subject of this paper. The release is viewed as giving rise to significant man-made perturbations of the earth’s atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere and here long-term disruptions of terrestrial radio wave communications are shown to be plausible. 2. VEHICLE AND ORBIT DESCRIPTION The basis of our investigation is formed by recent studies of orbital operations required for SPS construction (5). These studies indicate that the SPS components will be carried from low earth orbit to geosynchronous earth orbit by about 10 orbital transfer vehicles. Each orbital transfer vehicle will consist of a solar powered array of 300 one megawatt ion thrusters having an area of — 107/cm2. This thruster array will be attached by cables to the partially assembled SPS structure to be moved to geosynchronous earth orbit as shown in Figure 1. The ion thrusters’ fuel is argon due to its relatively high abundance (—1% of total atmosphere) and low cost (1). Additionally, the relatively low first and high second ionization potentials of Ar as well as its high specific impulse and thrust resulting from its intermediate weight also make it a reasonable choice (5). An orbital transfer vehicle will require —130 days for the low earth orbit to geosynchronous transfer. Thus, all of the orbital transfer vehicles will be flying almost simultaneously since the desired building rate of SPS is projected at one per —180 days. The transport of the SPS materials from earth to low earth orbit
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