Global Space Solar Power Working Group has held its first meeting

[bananas]

From the National Space Society:

http://blog.nss.org/?p=3530

First Major International Space Solar Power Organization Includes the National Space Society

The Global Space Solar Power Working Group (Global SSP-WG) has held its first meeting at the European Space Agency in Paris, France. All of the world’s major SSP players were represented, except for the Chinese. National Space Society CEO Mark Hopkins had the honor of representing NSS.

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During the Global SSP-WG meeting, Susumu Sasaki from JAXA (loosely the Japanese equivalent of NASA) reported that the current phase of their SSP program is virtually complete and that the next phase of their program should produce a demonstration satellite four years from now.

Leopold Summerer, head of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team, explained that they will probably produce a new SSP reference architecture soon. This will take into account the numerous relevant technical advances and insights that have occurred since the completion of the previous architecture.

John Mankins discussed the progress in the relatively small NASA SSP program that he heads. This program began in fall of 2011. NSS plays a substantial role in the educational outreach part of the program. NSS’ 2012 International Space Development Conference will be used to provide a report to the public of the preliminary results of the first phase of the program.

The Chinese SSP program is largely secret. Apparently, they completed the first phase of their program last summer and are now engaged in a second phase at a substantially higher level of funding. It is plausible that at the time of the Paris meeting, the Chinese were spending more on SSP than the rest of the world combined.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 9th, 2012

[LongTomH]

1. Space Solar Power was invented by a young American engineer in 1968.

Dr. Peter Glaser was a private contractor working on the Apollo 11 Lunar Ranging Retroreflector Array when he published his first paper on the Solar Power Satellite in 1968. He was granted a patent on the concept in 1973.

The solar power satellite was one of the ideas that the old L5 Society was founded on. L5 was originally founded to promote the space colony ideas of Dr. Gerard K. O'Neill. O'Neill wanted to build solar power satellites from lunar material to save the cost of boosting everything from Earth.

NASA and DOE did an intensive study of SPS in the late 1970s. The project was not continued after the 1980 election. The L5 Society was merged with (was 'assimilated by') von Braun's National Space Institute to form the National Space Society. There's a long story behind both developments; maybe I'll write it someday.

In any case, it looks like Space Solar Power is going to be another of those concepts in the: "invented here, sold there" category! The US will continue to drill in deeper waters, covering our coasts with oil; blow the tops of the last mountains in Appalachia to get at the coal, and poison our water supplies with fracking fluids before Big Carbon allows us to spend money on alternative energy - including SSP.