Value chain · CLM-1158
In plain terms
The 1978 plan put seven hundred people in orbit at a time, on ninety-day tours of sixty-hour weeks, adding up to about 270,000 tours over thirty years, and this workshop reviewed how much radiation they would get.
The claim as recorded
The September 1978 LBL workshop reviewed "the radiation environment to be experienced by space workers on SPS", with a scope "restricted to exclude nonionizing radiation (e.g., microwaves) and radiation effects on materials", for a programme in which "The total crew size in orbit is about 700 at any one time, constructing two satellites simultaneously", "The construction crew works ten hours per day, six days per week", personnel rotate "from GEO to LEO at 90-day intervals", and "the SPS mission might involve 270 thousand space workers over a period of 30 years" from "about 350 construction workers rotated every 90 days for each of 60 satellites during an eighteen month construction phase, and about twenty maintenance workers rotated every 90 days for each of 60 satellites during the thirty-year operational phase".
Evidence behind this: T3-national laboratory workshop proceedings with named editors and authors; the mission figures are the reference system's as the synthesis paper restates them.
Scope and limits
"270 THOUSAND SPACE WORKERS" IS 270,000 NINETY-DAY TOURS BY THE PAPER'S OWN FOOTNOTE ARITHMETIC, not 270,000 people; the paper does not say how many people. A 1978 workforce plan superseded by the 1979-80 reference system's options; ionising radiation only.
What it assumes
The reference-system workforce options as the paper's footnote states them ("will depend on options still under evaluation").
Where it comes from
PDF 5 / printed 3: "to review the present state of information on the radiation environment to be experienced by space workers on SPS" (normalised); "the scope of the workshop was restricted to exclude nonionizing radiation (e.g., microwaves) and radiation effects on materials" (normalised). PDF 220 / printed 218: "The total crew size in orbit is about 700 at any one time, constructing two satellites simultaneously" (normalised); "The construction crew works ten hours per day, six days per week" (normalised); "rotates personnel from GEO to LEO at 90-day intervals" (raw). PDF 255 / printed 253: "the SPS mission might involve 270 thousand space workers over a period of 30 years" (normalised); footnote 3, "there will be about 350 construction workers rotated every 90 days for each of 60 satellites during an eighteen month construction phase, and about twenty maintenance workers rotated every 90 days for each of 60 satellites during the thirty-year operational phase" (normalised). PDF 219 / printed 217: "A typical satellite has a solar collection area of about 55 km2 and a mass of about 50-million kg" (normalised). Recomputed: 350 x 60 x 6 = 126,000 and 20 x 60 x 120 = 144,000, sum 270,000, so the figure is 90-day tours; 10 x 6 = 60 hours a week.
Basis: workers; hours per day; days of rotation; km2; kg
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1158
CLM-1158, Energy Aperture, as of 1978-09.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-546
- CLM-1159A ninety-day shift in low orbit would give a worker about 20 rad, the trip up and back about 3, and ninety days at geostationary altitude...CLM-1160A big solar flare like August 1972 would push a spacesuited worker past the skin limit in three hours and the eye limit in two, so the...CLM-1161The 1978 plan assumed space workers would be allowed about ten times the radiation dose an ordinary radiation worker may take, under 1970...