SRC-465

Satellite Power System Concept Development and Evaluation Program, Volume VI: Construction and Operations, NASA Technical Memorandum 58233, 1981

Commissioned by NASA and US Department of Energy, the CDEP programme summary series. Who paid for a study is recorded because it bears on how its conclusions should be read, not because it makes them wrong.

Published claims resting on this source

• CLM-0982 The famous six months to build a satellite in orbit was decided first and the designs were fitted to it. One contractor says outright that it slowed its machines and cut its crew to make the number come out.
• CLM-0984 The programme's own arithmetic for the antenna frame: each beam takes its length divided by five metres a minute plus twenty minutes to handle, which comes to about three hours per bay, padded to four for downtime.
• CLM-0985 By 1981 the programme put about four hundred people at the orbital construction base, with roughly two-thirds of them on the actual building work and the rest running the base, each staying about ninety days. The prime contractor's 1979 plan for the same base had ten-hour shifts six days a week.
• CLM-0987 They built in high orbit not because it was cheaper - the 1978 numbers said low orbit was - but because a half-built satellite in low orbit gets pulled about by gravity gradients and drag, cools every time it passes into shadow, and cannot be flown up to high orbit in one piece without breaking.

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