Value chain · CLM-0199
In plain terms
The paper estimates that just launching the parts for a 1-gigawatt space solar power satellite would cost at least $25 billion, using 2010-era, pre-reusable-rocket launch prices scaled up from the Ariane V rocket. The author calls this launch cost alone "uneconomic." Adding the cost of building the satellite and the ground antenna brings the total to about $30 billion per gigawatt, which is far above the $1-5 billion per gigawatt the paper cites for building a new fossil-fuel or nuclear power plant.
The claim as recorded
SRC-043 derives a LEO launch cost of "no less than" USD 25 billion per GW (USD 25,000 per installed kilowatt) for a 1 GW powersat, based on an assumed 2,500-tonne satellite mass and an assumed USD 10 million/tonne launch cost extrapolated from Ariane V pricing scaled to heavy-lift-vehicle size; the author labels this launch-only figure "uneconomic," and the total rises to about USD 30 billion per GW once roughly USD 5 billion/GW of additional collector and ground-rectenna costs are added, which the paper compares against USD 1-2 billion/GW for existing fossil plants and USD 2-5 billion/GW for new nuclear plants.
Scope and limits
This is a first-of-a-kind, single-satellite, single-source back-of-envelope estimate from 2010, using an author-stated "assumed" and explicitly hypothetical (non-existent, scaled-up) launch vehicle. It predates reusable orbital-class rockets (the first reused-booster orbital flight was in 2017): the paper's own $10 million/tonne (USD 10,000/kg) LEO launch-cost assumption should not be read as representative of current launch pricing. It does not establish an nth-of-a-kind cost, a learning-rate-adjusted cost, or account for in-space transfer from LEO to the satellite's operational orbit (the paper separately notes LEO-to-GEO transfer is not included and assumes it could be done "for a fraction of current launch costs" via ion or plasma tugs, itself unquantified here). It does not establish that $25-30bn/GW is representative of any specific named SBSP architecture beyond this single illustrative calculation.
What it assumes
That a real heavy-lift vehicle could be built by linearly scaling Ariane V per-tonne pricing to a larger payload with no cost-per-tonne improvement from scale, reusability, or a different vehicle architecture; that the 2,500-tonne mass estimate for a 1 GW powersat (cited to the author's own 2002 conference paper, not verified here) is representative of the class of SPS designs the paper otherwise discusses.
Where it comes from
Page 17-18 (verified against rendered page images at 4x zoom): "The approximate mass of a 1 Gigawatt powersat has been estimated at no less than 2,500 tons. Using the assumed $10 million per ton cost of the Ariane V payloads, and assuming (only for this comparison) that the Ariane was scaled up to a true HLV size with the same launch cost per ton, this would put the current (uneconomic) cost for launching a single powersat to LEO at no less than 25 Billion dollars per Gigawatt... This estimate does not include any of the other costs..." Arithmetic check: 2,500 tonnes x $10 million/tonne = $25,000 million = $25 billion, and $25bn / 1,000,000 kW = $25,000/kW, both matching the text exactly and internally consistent (unlike the storage figure in CLM-0198). THIS QUOTATION IS SHORTENED AND THE OMISSIONS ARE MARKED. No word is altered. What was dropped, so a reader can judge whether the shortening is fair: the footnote marker; the per-kilowatt restatement of the same figure, which the arithmetic check above derives from what is still quoted; the 5 billion other-costs estimate and 30 billion total; and a closing comparison to fossil and nuclear capital costs, a different subject this claim does not assert.
Basis: USD, nominal, per installed GW (electrical), for a hypothetical single first-of-a-kind 1 GW powersat; launch-cost input is a scaled extrapolation of Ariane V-era per-tonne pricing, not a quoted price for any built or flown heavy-lift vehicle
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-003 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0199
CLM-0199, Energy Aperture, as of 2010.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.