SRC-574

Satellite Power Systems (SPS) Laser Studies, Volume II: Meteorological Effects on Laser Beam Propagation and Direct Solar Pumped Lasers for the SPS -- NASA CR-3347; Contract NAS8-32475; November 1980

Commissioned by Marshall Space Flight Center, Contract NAS8-32475 (per Foreword, Subcontract MOL8GNS-897409D). 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-1236 Clouds block a laser beam far more than a microwave beam. A 1980 NASA-funded study found that over most of the United States a single laser receiver would be clouded out too often to be a dependable power station, so each beam would need two or three receivers hundreds of kilometres apart and would have to switch between them, sometimes every few hours.
• CLM-1237 The colour of the laser light decides how much of it gets through the air. The calculations found almost no loss near 2 micrometres on a clear day, but the 10.6 micrometre carbon dioxide laser of the earlier designs would lose more than half its beam at sea level.

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