1. ALTERNATIVE LASER SATELLITE POWER SYSTEMS The four laser SPSs identified in Fig. 13 are listed, along with information and comments, in Table 4. Their orbital configurations are shown in Fig. 16. The Lockheed system (21) has already been discussed in Sec. 6. It should be emphasized that the systems listed in Table 4 are far from being extant pieces of hardware. They are only concepts in the early stages of formulation. The Rockwell/Beverly study (18) is ultimately concerned with assessing the environmental impacts of a laser SPS. In order to carry out that assessment it was necessary to specify a total system. In the system specified, the power satellites are in GEO and use a photovoltaic array, which is relatively heavy, for the conversion of sunlight to laser input electrical power. Each power satellite is an SPS Reference Concept satellite, except that the satellite uses 20 or 24 independent laser output beams (— 100 MW each) to transmit power to Earth, instead of a single microwave beam. The ratio of power available on Earth at the busbar to power produced by the photovoltaic array is 0.14 (18), and the ratio of power produced by the array to intercepted solar power is 0.12 (1). The product, about 2%, is the overall efficiency for the conversion of sunlight to electric power at the busbar.
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