SRC-543

Environmental Assessment for the Satellite Power System Concept Development and Evaluation Program-Electromagnetic Systems Compatibility; DOE/ER-0096; January 1981

Commissioned by U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Energy Research, Solar Power Satellite Projects Division; Under Contract No. KD-03-82029. 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-1000 By 1981 the government's own compatibility study said the satellite's frequency band had not actually been allocated to it, listed which services each harmonic would land on, and concluded that radio telescopes could not work within about 150 km of a receiving site.
• CLM-1001 Besides the deliberate beam and the tubes' noise, the satellite's fifty square kilometres of warm solar array glow faintly at radio frequencies; the 1981 study put that glow at a level far below anything else and noted that the tube noise would change if magnetrons or other tubes replaced the klystrons.
• CLM-1002 The 1981 study tells you exactly which international rulebooks it measured the satellite against, report by report, and warns that the second harmonic lands in the working band of America's biggest radio telescope even though no rule formally protects it there.
• CLM-1204 A 1981 US government study worked out what happens when an airliner flies through the beam. Its wings would reflect some of the beam, mostly away from the cabin. It judged the passengers' exposure insignificant, because the windows are small and the plane is in the beam for under a minute.
• CLM-1205 A 1981 US study worked out what a satellite in low orbit feels when it flies through the beam. For a craft like LANDSAT, the strongest part lasts about a second and the whole crossing about 13 seconds. In tests, one of its cameras failed completely when enough of the beam's power shone into it. The study suggested such satellites could pause commands during a crossing for now, and be redesigned later.

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