SRC-480

Solar Power Satellite System Definition Study, Part I and Part II, Volume II, Technical Summary; D180-22876-2 / NASA CR-151666; December 1977

Commissioned by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center; Contract NAS9-15196, DRL T-1346, DRD MA-664T, Line Item 3. 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-1467 (low confidence) Keeping people out of the area where the beam is strong is a plausible way for a strong beam to meet the 2020 international limit for public exposure, and international exposure guidance accepts limiting access as a way to comply. Other designs have worked this out: a 2013 Japanese review plans a no-entry area 3.5 kilometres across, and a 2007 international study sizes a 4-kilometre receiver this way. A 1977 US study set aside 204 square kilometres for one receiving site, without saying in its cost table what fixed that size, and costed buying and preparing that land. A 2026 international radio report that takes CASSIOPeiA as its example says the beam can be designed to fall below the public limit at the edge of the receiving site, with a safety zone matching the beam's footprint, about 3.5 to 6.5 by 7 to 13 kilometres in the UK. A diagram in it shows the receiving site taking 245 watts per square metre, but the report gives no figure for the beam's strength at the edge and no cost for the zone. A 2021 UK cost model for a CASSIOPeiA design includes the land for the receiving site but names no safety zone.

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