SRC-482

Solar Power Satellite System Definition Study, Part II, Volume IV, Microwave Power Transmission Systems; D180-22876-4 / NASA CR-151668; 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-1089 The higher industrial band would have shrunk the receiving field to a fifth or a third of its size, at the price of a satellite that could not shed its heat, a bigger electricity bill, and a beam that rain could knock out. Every time the programme costed it the answer was the same and 2.45 GHz stayed.
• CLM-1099 Boeing's 1977 sum gave the ground receiver 85 per cent, said it was probably a little low, and drew the trade that sets a rectenna's size: spreading the power evenly across the transmitter needs the smallest transmitter but wastes the most power outside the receiver's edge, and tapering the power towards the transmitter's edge makes the transmitter bigger and wastes less.
• CLM-1100 Boeing thought the receiving elements could be spaced almost twice as far apart as Raytheon's, halving their number, and that the receiver might lie flat on the ground rather than tilted at the satellite, but said the rectenna had had little attention and both ideas needed analysis.

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