Value chain · CLM-1077
In plain terms
The ground station was seven million panels holding thirteen billion little antennas, costed at about two and a half billion dollars, about 1.7 million tonnes of steel and nearly seven million cubic yards of concrete, and built by three thousand people in two years.
The claim as recorded
The rectenna as its designers stated it in April 1980: a "10 KM x 14 KM ellipse" of "modified half-wave dipole" elements each collecting "70 cm2", delivering "1-2 W" per diode at 23 mW/cm2, in "7,060,224" panels of "3 m x 3.33 m" arranged in ten rings; availability such that "80% of the rated satellite power is available 96.8% of the time" with "208 hours" a year scheduled; harmonic filtering by "two low pass filter sections which attenuate the second and higher order harmonics by over 25 dB", each further section adding "approximately 17 dB more suppression ... at a cost of approximately 1% efficiency loss"; Fresnel edge losses "between 1 to 2%"; and a 5 GW cost of Land (47,800 acres at $2,500/acre) $120M, Structures and Installation $346M, RF Assemblies and Ground Plane $959M, Distribution Busses $308M, Command and Control Center $70M, Power Processing and Grid Interface $775M, TOTAL $2,578M; General Electric's parallel statement was "over $2 billion, of which two thirds would be the cost of constructing the rectenna", "approximately 13 billion elements" and "about the antenna's 7 billion rectifiers"; the prototype site assessment for the same design at Rose Valley put onsite construction at "$1.7 billion" with "11 million tonnes of aggregates and ballast, 1.4 million tonnes of cement, 6.5 million cubic yards of concrete, 1.7 million tonnes of steel and 170,000 tonnes of aluminum" and "an average work force of 2,500 and a peak work force of 3,200" over "25 months".
Evidence behind this: T3, the rectenna designers' abstract with a rendered cost table unsourced on the page, GE's parallel figures and a prototype site study's quantities.
Scope and limits
Raytheon's cost table is unsourced on the page; the panel counts differ between Raytheon (7,060,224 of 3 x 3.33 m) and the ERG site study (2.5 million of 3 x 10 m), which are different panel definitions of about the same area (70.6 and 75 km2). United Engineers put the civil costs low "by a factor of three to five" (CLM-1079).
What it assumes
47,800 acres is 193 km2, more than the 10 x 14 km ellipse's 110 km2, so the land line includes the buffer.
Where it comes from
PDF p.350 / printed 328, normalised: "10 KM x 14 KM ellipse" (normalised); "modified half-wave dipole ... 70 cm2"; "1-2 W"; "7,060,224" and "3 m x 3.33 m" (text layer); PDF p.351 / printed 329, render read: the filter and Fresnel sentences and the cost table as quoted; "The rectenna size is determined by the point where the incremental rate of return from sales of the intercepted power are marginal." PDF p.350 / printed 328: "80% of the rated satellite power is available 96.8% of the time, and that scheduled no-power periods total only 208 hours per year" (text layer). PDF p.345 / printed 323: "over $2 billion, of which two thirds would be the cost of constructing the rectenna"; "approximately 13 billion elements"; "about the antenna's 7 billion rectifiers". PDF p.354 / printed 332: absorption limit "theoretically confirmed to be 100%"; PDF p.357 / printed 335, Figure 3, render read at zoom 10: aircraft diffraction "Possible 6-9dB Signal Increase (Depending on size, shape, and height of object)". PDF p.490 / printed 469: "an ellipse 13.4 km (N-S) by 10.0 km (E-W) and would enclose an area of about 10,500 hectares"; "about 2.5 million 3 meter by 10 meter panels"; "Approximately 450 workers ... for 24-hour/365 days per year operation"; the materials, workforce and 25 months as quoted. PDF p.546 / printed 525: "Total onsite construction costs are estimated at $1.7 billion."
Basis: km; cm2 per element; W per diode; panels; per cent availability; $M by element; tonnes of materials
Related records
- Answers question
- QST-001 not published in this release
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1077
CLM-1077, Energy Aperture, as of 1980-04.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-449
- CLM-0964To build two of these satellites a year, about 300 tonnes of material had to arrive at the orbital construction site every day. Getting it...CLM-0974The 1978 reference design shows every loss between sunlight and the power grid as a chain of numbered boxes, and the boxes multiply out...CLM-0975Depending on which published assumptions you take, a satellite needs between about 2 and 6 square kilometres of solar blanket for every...CLM-1058The often-repeated claim that the magnetron is 188 decibels quieter than its carrier traces to a conference abstract in which the tube...CLM-1059By spring 1980 the engineers, the reviewing panel and the ionosphere experimenters were all saying the beam-intensity ceiling the whole...CLM-1060The 1980 review did not agree with itself on how much of a satellite's cost was rockets: one paper said over a third, the programme's own...CLM-1061In one 1980 volume the satellite cost anywhere from about 2,300 to 3,800 dollars a kilowatt depending on who added what - and the programme...CLM-1062In 1980 the launch vehicle that everything was costed on was said by its own designers to be arbitrarily big, and they proposed a rocket a...More on the source page.