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Old October 15th 10, 04:04 AM posted to sci.space.policy,sci.astro,sci.physics,sci.space.history
William Mook[_2_]
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Posts: 3,840
Default NASA changing opinion on the Direct HLV launcher.

SIZE OF ULTIMATE BUYER MARKET PER SATELLITE:

A 10,000 MW station serves 2,788,000 Americans. About 349 people per
ground station.

REVENUE STREAM GENERATED:
10,000 MW x 24 hours x 365.25 days x $0.05 per kWh = $4.38 billion per
year.

VALUE OF REVENUE STREAM:
$4.38 billion per yer x 30 years at 3.5% discount = $80.61 billion

HOW MUCH IT COSTS TO CREATE REVENUE STREAM:

$12 billion total

$5 billion vehicle development
$2 billion vehicle construction and operation
$1.5 billion - satellite development
$3.5 billion - satellite construction and operation

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE:

60 months


HOW MUCH MUST BE SOLD TO PROVIDE VENTURE CAPITAL RATES OF RETURN?

34.35% of the first satellite.

EXPEND RETURN $ REVENUE

$ 600,000 $ 3,226,944 4.01%
$ 2,400,000 $ 7,971,615 9.90%
$ 4,800,000 $10,545,600 13.10%
$ 2,400,000 $ 3,750,000 4.66%
$ 1,800,000 $ 2,160,000 2.68%

$12,000,000 $27,654,159 34.35%

TOTAL: $80,500,000

HOW MANY SATELLITES WILL BE LAUNCHED PER YEAR?

250

HOW MANY ARE NEEDED TO MEET ALL PRESENT NEED?

1,700

HOW MANY WILL BE NEEDED IN 10 YEARS ASSUMING 4% GROWTH IN DEMAND FOR
ENERGY?

2,420

WHAT IS THE VALUE OF THE SATELLITE ARRAY ONCE DEPLOYED?

$400 TRILLION!

WHAT IS THE SEPARATION OF EACH SATELLITE ON GEO?

90 km

CAN GROWTH BE MAINTAINED AFTER THIS?

Yes.

HOW?

By building a more advanced satellite. This satellite will consist of
a pair of daughter satellites. While the first satellite has a 5.2 km
concentrator that illuminates a 125 m target, the advanced satellite
consists of two 'targets' 500 m in diameter. The first flies to GEO
from LEO. The second flies to Jupiter from LEO both using solar
powered MEMS ion rockets that are used for attitude control over the
30 year life of each satellite.

The Jupiter bound satellite executes a sling shot maneuver that causes
it to ultimately fall directly into the Sun. When it reaches a
distance of 2.25 million miles the Sun centered satellite deploys
solar sails that allow it to hover at this distance from the Sun
directly beneath Earth where it intercepts over 400 GW of power and
beams 250 GW efficiently to its sister satellite at GEO. The GEO
satellite reforms the laser energy efficiently and beams 220 GW to 220
million users at 1 KW per beam, simultaneously.

HOW MANY OF THESE SATELLITES ARE NEEDED TO MEET TODAY'S ENERGY NEEDS?

70

HOW MANY WILL YOU DEPLOY?

2,500 between the low energy systems.

WHY?

2,500 x 220,000 MW = 770,000,000 MW is 45.3x the power level humanity
functions at today. Achieving this goal in 25 years from today (2035)
implies an economic growth of 16% per year. At 7% per year this
represents 56 years of steady growth. At 4% per year this represents
97 years of steady growth.

HOW WILL THIS ENERGY BE USED?

As energy costs drop from $0.05 per kilowatt-hour to $2.50 per mega-
watt hour uses of beamed energy will multiply. This will include the
use of lasers to implement beamed laser propulsion using MEMS rocket
arrays to radically transform transportation industry on Earth. It
will also include using laser rockets and laser light sails to tap
into the vast resources of the Solar System's asteroid belt.

WHAT CHANGES HAVE TO BE MADE IN THE BASIC FLIGHT SYSTEM TO KEEP UP?

The thirty-five elements that over 20 years are launched 1,000x each,
to deploy the satellite systems described here, will still have 1,000
additional uses available to them. Rebuilding them with laser rockets
of far higher performance possible with chemical rockets will allow
the five three-stage systems to become thirty-five single stage
systems. Improved logistics along with larger numbers of vehicles
will allow flight rates to increase from 250 per year to one flight
every 5 hours. Total payload to orbit will increase from 175,000 tons
per year to 1,225,000 tons per year - without any further changes.

HOW MUCH STUFF WILL BE IN SPACE?

The asteroid belt has enough material in it to supply 10 billion
people at millionaire levels for five million years by using only 1%
of the material there.

This material is ALREADY in space. Anything we add to the mix is
small by comparison - at first.

The increase in flight rate following the adoption of efficient laser
engines will allow deployment of significant infrastructure on orbit,
beyond the power satellites, which include larger power satellites and
major tele-operated industrial components as well as laser powered
deep space flight systems.

Assuming we are funded this year and start initial flight operations
in 2015 - by 2025 we will have displaced all fuel use with power
satellites and realized significant value creation. By 2035 we will
have MEMS laser rockets powered from space which allow a spacecraft in
every garage powered by 3.5 million tons of power satellites on orbit.

After 2035 flight rates increase due to the changes described and from
2035 to 2050 we will put up an additional 18.4 million tons of
materiel - which will allow us to import nearly all of our raw
materials from the asteroid belt by 2050 and process it on orbit into
useful products which are then distributed anywhere people live on
Earth or in space.

The Earth will be a vast residential park and the bulk of human
industry will be conducted off world.

Large numbers of pressure vessels will be outfitted on orbit and
become space homes for a growing number of people. Laser light sails
will be attached to many of these and they will cruise around the
solar system. The age of the private interplanetary space station
will have arrived.

Increasing power levels and other improvements involving gravity
lensing of laser energy around the sun, will allow these stations to
move beyond Sol to nearby stars. The personal interstellar space
station will have arrived.

This could all be accomplished well before the 100th anniversary of
the first moon landing.