Value chain · CLM-1165
In plain terms
In 1978 the government said plainly what it did not know about a space power station's effects: almost nothing about long, low-level microwave exposure of people, almost nothing about birds in the beam and nothing about whole ecosystems, and no numbers yet for anything else; it gave itself two years to find out.
The claim as recorded
The October 1978 preliminary environmental assessment set the programme's goal as "to advance the state of knowledge by the year 1980 to the point where the probability and severity of SPS impacts can be assessed", and stated what it did not yet know: of "roughly 5000 citations" on microwave bioeffects, mostly Soviet and East European, "relatively few are concerned with the health effects of continuous wave 2.45 GHz radiation and almost none with the ecological effects", the base being "incomplete, often contradictory, and not entirely pertinent", with the priorities "the effects of continuous, low-level exposure on humans and short-term high-level exposures on airborne biota"; "in no study has the impact of microwaves on an entire ecosystem been attempted"; for non-microwave effects "Time and information, to date, have been inadequate to make quantitative assessments", the harder questions including whether "some species of wildlife may be attracted to the rectenna in large numbers" and whether reflected satellite light would disturb "the rhythmic cycle (e.g., reproduction, dormancy, etc.) in plants and animals".
Evidence behind this: T3-the DOE programme's own executive summary of its preliminary assessment, written for the lay reader; statements of the knowledge state, not measurements.
Scope and limits
A 1978 STATEMENT OF INTENT AND IGNORANCE, superseded in substance by the 1980 assessments it announced (SRC-086, SRC-529, SRC-535) and by the primaries read 2026-09-20 to 2026-09-24 (SRC-537, SRC-557, SRC-530, SRC-546); Volume II, the technical basis, is not held. "5000 citations" is the programme's count of a literature it then discounted for method (PDF 6).
What it assumes
No assumptions are recorded against this claim.
Where it comes from
PDF 2 / printed iii: "Present conceptual designs provide for microwave transmission at a frequency of 2.45 gigahertz and generation of 5 to 10 gigawatts-electric at each rectenna" (normalised); "The goal of these programs is to advance the state of knowledge by the year 1980 to the point where the probability and severity of SPS impacts can be assessed" (normalised). PDF 5 / printed 1: "for the edification of the interested layman" (raw); "Where the data base is now inadequate, it has been necessary to either make preliminary assessments with appropriate caveats or to defer evaluation pending further development of the state of the art" (normalised). PDF 6 / printed 3: "The international literature in this area consists of roughly 5000 citations. The majority of these publications originate from research in the Soviet Union and other East European countries" (normalised); "Of the remaining reports, relatively few are concerned with the health effects of continuous wave 2.45 GHz radiation and almost none with the ecological effects" (normalised); "Although a data base does exist for the SPS-specific frequency, it is incomplete, often contradictory, and not entirely pertinent to the environmental conditions projected to be associated with SPS" (normalised); "Principal among these are the effects of continuous, low-level exposure on humans and short-term high-level exposures on airborne biota" (normalised). PDF 8 / printed 6: "in no study has the impact of microwaves on an entire ecosystem been attempted" (normalised). PDF 25-26 / printed 23-24: "Time and information, to date, have been inadequate to make quantitative assessments" (normalised); "the possibility that some species of wildlife may be attracted to the rectenna in large numbers, and the possible disturbance of the rhythmic cycle (e.g., reproduction, dormancy, etc.) in plants and animals by reflected light from satellites" (normalised); "there is probably no need for a large, experimental ecological research program for nonmicrowave effects" (normalised).
Cite this
energyaperture.com/c/clm-1165
CLM-1165, Energy Aperture, as of 1978-10.
Connected records
Other published records linked to this one. A list, not a judgement.
- Also from SRC-500
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