William-Black on DeviantArthttps://www.deviantart.com/william-black/art/SPS-Concept-Art-716965461William-Black

Deviation Actions

William-Black's avatar

SPS Concept Art

Published:
2.3K Views

Description

Artwork Courtesy NASA

This is the first in a series of images from David Portree's collection of SPS (Solar Power Satellite) Program concept art. I've acquired permission to share these amazing images along with descriptive text from David's comprehensive article on the topic. These fine quality paintings were commissioned by NASA at the height of the SPS study. During his time at NASA's Johnson Space Center ('92 - '95) David came across the art, which had been consigned to the dumpster. David had the forethought to rescue the artwork and later used to it to illustrate his article Electricity from Space: The 1970s DOE/NASA Solar Power Satellite Studies.

Note: The majority of descriptive text in these posts comes from David's article, however I have selected only the text I need to place the images in proper context and arranged for form, I do recommend that those interested follow the link above where David's article is available in full. Also, in order to distinguish my comments from David Portree's text, or to indicate where I have paraphrased and added comment, my comments will be preceded by the "Note:" indication.

Of all the many spaceflight concepts NASA has studied, probably the most enormous was the Solar Power Satellite (SPS) fleet.

Each satellite would measure 10.5 kilometers long by 5.2 kilometers wide and had a mass of 50,000 tons. 60 such satellites with a total generating capacity of 300 gigawatts were planned. Solar cells would convert sunlight to electricity, the electricity would then be converted to microwaves and beamed by a transmitting antenna one kilometer in diameter to receiving stations on Earth (rectenna), several kilometers across.

Constructed in space, at geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), 35,786 kilometers above the equator, the satellites would pass through Earth's shadow for only a few minutes each year.

The advantage of orbital SPS over a solar array on Earth's surface was, as mentioned, that it would spend almost no time in Earth's shadow. Earth's rotation meant that an Earth-surface solar array could make electricity at most about half the time. The rest of the time it would sit dormant under the night sky.

Note: SPS called for the development of enormous heavy lift launch vehicles, several classes of orbital transfer craft and orbital facilities: LEO staging bases for freight and personnel transfer, and out at the GEO construction site, warehousing facilities for payloads arriving around the clock and space habitats for construction crews and support personnel. Construction of the fleet would span 30 years. Thousands of people would be living and working at GEO at the peak phase of construction. In addition to construction workers, personnel needed in space would include physicians, administrators, OTV pilots, life support engineers, general maintenance workers, cooks, space suit tailors, and computer technicians. Personnel needed on the ground - at the launch/landing site, at the rectennas, and at widely scattered factories for manufacturing SPS parts, OTVs, spares, foodstuffs, and propellants - would outnumber astronauts by at least 10 to 1, NASA and DOE estimated. Building and operating the SPSs could become a major new U.S. industry.

Bio, David S.F. Portree: From 1992 to 1995, David Portree served as Senior Technical Writer and Historian at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. He has written several histories for NASA, including Thirty Years Together: A Chronology of U.S./Soviet Space Cooperation (1993), Mir Hardware Heritage (1995), Walking to Olympus: an EVA Chronology (1997), Orbital Debris: A Chronology (1999), and Humans to Mars: Fifty Years of Mission Planning. Astronomy Magazine, Air & Space Smithsonian, and other popular-audience magazines have carried his byline, and he has contributed more than 200 spaceflight and planetary science articles to encyclopedias. The International Academy of Astronautics gave Walking to Olympus its Napolitano Book Award in 1998. Most of David’s history writing at present is published on his Spaceflight History blog.

Related Art

SPS: Boeing Space Freighter

SPS: NASA Space Freighter

SPS: LEO Staging Base

SPS: Basic Beambuilder

SPS: Multiple Beambuilder System

SPS: OTV Crew

SPS: Solar Cell Blankets

SPS: Operational Satellite

SPS: Rectenna

SPS Fleet Near The End of 2015

 

Image size
1000x746px 61.4 KB
© 2017 - 2024 William-Black
Comments1
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
doktorno's avatar
So many opportunities wasted...