Dr. Astrain spoke of INTELSAT’s 105 shareholder countries, its 144 user countries, and how there may be as many as 97 satellite communications systems in use or in the planning stage by 1985. These include international, domestic, maritime, and military systems. As demand increases, large geostationary space platforms with many antennas will be needed, he said. Dr. Heiss’ paper emphasized the importance of the Landsat satellites in providing crop information to alleviate world hunger and the importance of getting space transportation on a basis similar to that of air transport as soon as possible. Prof. M. Curien, President, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES) (France), discussed various methods of estimating the costs of space programs and the difficulties of measuring their long-term productive capability. Dr. Mueller described the NASA SPS “reference system’’ as 60 satellites, each delivering 5 GW of electricity, each as big as Manhattan Island, each weighing 38,000,000 kg, and each beaming power at 2.45 GHz frequency to a 10 x 13 km receiving antenna; total cost a trillion dollars. He said satellites would cost 10 times as much as producing energy by other means. He spoke as if the NASA reference system were the only way to harvest energy from space and said the energy costs were prohibitive. He felt that microwave problems, political opposition, military vulnerability, and the high cost of the reference system would prevent its being built. When asked during the question period where he had obtained his data, and what were the costs of producing equivalent power by conventional means, his answers were evasive. His pessimistic views were not shared by subsequent speakers. The Scientific Sessions of the Congress were divided into categories as indicated in Table 1. The development of space programs in Third World countries was seen in Dr. K. Kasturirangan’s reading of Dr. U. R. Rao’s “Overview of the Indian Satellite Projects’’ which covered communications and earth resources satellites being built and planned by the Indian government to reach operation in the mid 1980s, some to be launched by ESA’s Ariane rocket, some by India’s own 4 stage solid propellant launch vehicle. There were three other papers by participants from India, and papers presented by Dr. H. Safavi of Iran and Dr. J.L.A. Hernandez of Mexico in sessions of the International Institute of Space Law. The Symposium on Space and Energy was of particular interest to SUNSAT members, especially Session 17, “Satellite Power Stations for Earth,” which was chaired by Dr. Maurice Claverie of the Centre National de la Recherches Scien- tifique, Paris. Dr. Jerry Grey, the first speaker at Session 17, presented “An Overview of the DOE/NASA SPS Concept Development and Evaluation Effort” for Frederick Koomanoff, Director, Satellite Power System Project Office, U.S. Department of Energy, who was unable to attend. He said this fall marked the end of present formal U.S. efforts on solar power satellites because as of October 1 there was no further financial support for SPS in the U.S. Budget, although enough support could be expected to finish out the year. He reported that the Department of Energy (DOE)ZNational Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) study began in 1977. Its purpose has been to explore the technical feasibility, economic practicality, and social and political acceptability of solar power satellites. To provide a reference system for the study NASA postulated satellites in geosynchronous orbit 6 x 10 km across sending solar energy via microwaves at a frequency of 2.45 GHz to receiving antennas 10 x 13 km across at the earth’s surface delivering 5 GWe to utility grids. The reference system included designs for heavy lift launch vehicles (HLLV) to low
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