Energy Aperture

Value chain · CLM-0816

In plain terms

In their 2020 study of the 1978 NASA/DOE design, the authors list their own weak points: only whole-system detail rather than part-by-part, a background database built mainly on European data and patched with substitutes, social impacts assessed only for supply-chain actors and workers because organisations would not share data, and seven impact categories that lacked weighting factors and could not be checked against any global or planetary-limit yardstick because none had then been defined for them.

The claim as recorded

The paper's stated study limitations are that results are generic system-level only because subsystem data could not be obtained from the reference programme documents; that the Strathclyde Space Systems Database has a mainly European focus and, where data was missing or unsuitable for the United States or this system, the authors substituted a global perspective, new literature-based datasets, or forced proxy and comparable-alternative datasets; that social impacts model only the value-chain-actor and worker stakeholder categories because organisations were unwilling to contribute data, with stakeholder risk values altered to reflect this; and that normalisation and weighting factors and AGIs and PBs are not available for seven impact categories, so potentially meaningful impacts in those categories may be overlooked.

Scope and limits

This records the paper's own disclosed scope limits and must be used to qualify, never to dismiss, every other claim drawn from this source. In particular, any ranking of this paper's ozone result at CLM-0812 against its mineral-depletion or human-toxicity results must state that eight of the paper's 18 impact categories have no AGI or PB value in this source (the seven that s3.3 lists, and mineral resource depletion, which s5.3 on p11 also names as excluded), so relative severity across all categories cannot be ranked from it.

What it assumes

No assumptions are recorded against this claim.

Where it comes from

SRC-212 A process-based life cycle sustainability assessment of the space-based solar power concept....
p6 s3.3, non-contiguous excerpts in source order: "Firstly, the analysis is only capable of providing generic system-level results since highly detailed subsystem data could not be obtained from the CDEP documents for the purposes of this study..." ... "some datasets had to forcibly be represented through proxies or comparable alternatives..." ... "only the stakeholder categories of value chain actors and workers are currently modelled due to a lack of data..." ... "the normalisation & weighting factors and AGIs & PBs are not currently available for all impact categories... The affected impact categories are CRMDP, TCED, IRP, PMFP, FRDP, HTP and METP (see Table 5)."
Related records
Answers question
QST-008 not published in this release

Cite this

energyaperture.com/c/clm-0816

CLM-0816, Energy Aperture, as of 2020.

Connected records

Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.

Also from SRC-212
CLM-0316In 2009 three researchers guessed that, once the energy to deliver and use it is counted, an oil-based fuel must return at least about 3...
CLM-0810A 2020 modelling study estimated that, across its whole operating life from 2040 to 2100, the 1978 NASA/DOE space solar power design would...
CLM-0811In a 2020 modelling study of the 1978 NASA/DOE space solar power design, the carbon per kilowatt-hour fell the longer the satellites were...
CLM-0812A 2020 modelling study of the 1978 NASA/DOE design estimated that its ozone-depleting emissions, almost all from burning rocket fuel at...
CLM-0813The paper's detailed component-by-component calculation gives a carbon figure five to six times higher than an older top-down calculation...
CLM-0814A 2020 conference paper's own cost model put the whole 60-satellite programme of the 1978 US reference design at about 3.86 trillion US...
CLM-0815The 2020 study of the 1978 NASA/DOE design did not count any warming from the microwave beams themselves, saying that is too hard to...
CLM-0817The authors state openly that a space-solar-power advocacy non-profit paid for this study, that part of the reason was to test or support...
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