Value chain · CLM-0929
In plain terms
A search of the 2011 international assessment finds no power-density limit set by the ionosphere, and it mentions the ionosphere only twice in substance: once to say that tests from low orbit to the ground would be useful for understanding the beam's interaction with it, and once in a historical table of past experiments. The search used set terms and could miss a limit written in other units or other words.
The claim as recorded
The 2011 IAA international assessment states no ionospheric power-density limit anywhere. Searched across all 272 pages, raw and de-hyphenated: "23 mW/cm" zero, "230 W/m" zero, "ionospheric limit" zero, "ionospheric threshold" zero. "ionospher" occurs eight times across three pages, case-insensitive (five in lower case, on two pages): one forward-looking sentence at printed p.155 saying that microwave power transmission tests "from LEO to the ground, for example, appear very useful in further evaluating the interactions of the WPT beam with the ionosphere", one in the acronym list at printed p.174 (MINIX), and six in Appendix G's table of past wireless-power tests at printed p.237. So the first international assessment of space solar power treats the beam-ionosphere interaction as a matter still needing flight test, and carries no power-density limit derived from it. Appendix G also records a 1992 sounding-rocket experiment, METS, as the "First measurement of non-linear ionosphere interactions due to microwave WPT", and the 1983 MINIX test as the "First test of microwave WPT thru' ionosphere".
Evidence behind this: T4: an International Academy of Astronautics study-group final report, not a government or agency report. This is a NULL with its search stated: the terms, the normalisations and the controls are all in support, and the document's text layer needs no de-hyphenation - 108 hyphen line-break joins across 272 pages, and every positive quotation matched raw except the METS entry, whose "non-linear" breaks across a line at its own hyphen and matches only when that break is closed with the hyphen kept.
Scope and limits
A NULL OVER ONE DOCUMENT, NOT OVER THE LITERATURE. It establishes that this assessment does not state a limit; it says nothing about whether a limit existed in 2011. THE SEARCH TERMS ARE UNIT-SPECIFIC AND A LIMIT EXPRESSED IN OTHER UNITS OR OTHER WORDS WOULD BE MISSED - the control shows the subject is reachable, not that every phrasing of a limit was tried. The drafting stream read chapter 9 findings in full, the contents, the participant appendix and targeted passages; chapters 1 to 8 were NOT read, so a limit stated in body text away from these terms is possible and this null rests on the search rather than on the read. The METS and MINIX entries are Appendix G's own characterisations of past tests, not results, and nothing here establishes what either measured.
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
THE SEARCH IS THE FINDING AND IS STATED IN FULL. Extractor PyMuPDFget_text, whitespace-normalised, run over all 272 pages both raw and with-\njoined, root the held file itself. Terms returning ZERO in both normalisations: "23 mW/cm", "230 W/m", "ionospheric limit", "ionospheric threshold". Control: "ionospher" returns 8 case-insensitive across the same extraction (printed pp.155, 174 and 237; 5 in lower case, on pp.155 and 237), so the sweep demonstrably finds the subject when it is there and the zeros are not an extraction failure. Verbatim, printed p.155: "Tests of microwave power transmission at various power levels from LEO to the ground, for example, appear very useful in further evaluating the interactions of the WPT beam with the ionosphere." Verbatim, Appendix G: "First test of microwave WPT thru' ionosphere" (1983, MINIX) and "First measurement of non-linear ionosphere interactions due to microwave WPT" (1992, METS).
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-001 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-0929
CLM-0929, Energy Aperture, as of 2011.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
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