0191-9067/81/010013-16$02.00/0 Copyright ® 1981 SUNSAT Energy Council THE SOLAR POWER SATELLITE — PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE PETER E. GLASER Arthur D. Little, Inc. Cambridge, MA 02140 Abstract — The potential of solar energy is surveyed and the consequences of increased solar energy use are outlined. The connection is made between advances in space technology and efforts to harness solar energy and the objectives of the solar power satellite (SPS) concept are introduced. The technical challenges facing the evolution of the SPS are discussed in terms of solar energy conversion in orbit, power transmission to and rectification at a receiving antenna on Earth, transportation of payloads and orbital assembly and maintenance. The economic feasibility and the envirionmental and societal issues are highlighted and ongoing assessments of the SPS are mentioned. The international implications of the SPS are underlined and the common interests of both developed and developing countries recognized. The implementation of an SPS is presented as providing an impetus to achieving the inevitable transition to renewable sources of energy. THE POTENTIAL OF SOLAR ENERGY “It may be that, in the future, man will have no use for energy and be indifferent to stars except as spectacles, but if (and this seems more probable) energy is still needed, the stars cannot be allowed to continue in their old way, but will be turned into efficient heat engines” (1). This statement rings even more true today, now that we have rediscovered the inexhaustible potential of solar energy. The potential of solar energy as a source of power has been recognized and evaluated for more than 100 years. Efforts to harness solar energy accelerated during the last half of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th Centuries as the world’s energy needs grew as a result of the Industrial Revolution. These efforts subsided with the successful development of energy economies based, at first, on coal and, subsequently, on the use of liquid petroleum fuels. But then, in the 1960’s, the world’s fossil fuel resources were calculated to be finite and their availability only an ephemeral event — on the time scale of recent human history — of, perhaps, a few centuries (2). Subsequently, projection of energy consumption in the United States indicated that soon after the year 2000 a gap would be created which could be filled by solar energy (3) . There were growing concerns about the environment, about the role of nuclear power and, ultimately, about the possible large-scale use of coal as a long-term replacement for liquid petroleum fuels. These concerns and uncertainties were further compounded by the limits-to-growth philosophy and its implications, in the face of burgeoning populations and diminishing resources, on the maintenance of
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