Talking about SSP and some thoughts on space policy

Has anyone read this article?
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1641/1

Here is a part that offers much food for thought:

"...two groups held solar energy conferences separated by one week, 1700 miles, and a million light years. The first was SOLAR 2010, the annual conference of the American Solar Energy Society held in Phoenix, Arizona. The second was the "First National Space Society Space Solar Power Symposium" held at the International Space Development Conference in Chicago, Illinois.

The Space Solar Power Symposium featured approximately three dozen presentations on the subject, including individuals from Japan and India. The presentation topics ranged from the mundane ("Prospects for microwave wireless power transmission") to the polemic ("Why Space Solar Power is the Answer and the ONLY Answer to Our Long Term Energy Needs").

But if you went to SOLAR 2010 a week earlier, you would have noticed something rather striking. Despite the attendance of hundreds of people, numerous companies, and the presentation of hundreds of technical papers; despite the presence of the United States' best experts on energy policy, energy transmission, energy generation, and solar power technologythere were no presentations on space solar power.

Think about that for a moment. What does it say about space solar power?

What it says is that space solar power is a fringe idea that is not even taken seriously within the niche field of solar power generation. What it also says is that the space solar power community doesn't play with the big boys. It's a community that talks to itself, that seeks the comfort of like-minded individuals, and doesn't even try to sell its message to the audience most likely to give it a fair hearing.

If the space solar power community wants to be taken seriously, there is a good way it can start. Instead of holding the "Second NSS Space Solar Power Symposium" at the International Space Development Conference next year, they should try to hold it at SOLAR 2011. They should see if they can face the members of the American Solar Energy Society directly and hear what they think of the idea of space solar power. It's time for the space solar power advocates to decide if they want to be a social organization, no different from a knitting circle or a model train club, or if they want to be an industry."

Has anyone tried contacting American Solar Energy Society? Or approach them about what their interest maybe in it?

Someone else pointed out in the Comments section, that considering that ISS is the biggest Solar Power Platform in orbit right now, has anyone studied how well its Solar panels work, how much maintance it required, what problems have they had with them, etc. Also it should be noted that the current price tag for ISS is $100 Billion, which also matches some of the earily estimates on how much a SSP would cost. You can either look at that as the inefficiency of a Government program or the original cost estimates of SSP where bleeding optimistic! Or both.

Somethings I would like to see done. One way to test out the viablity of SSP would be to add a microwave transmitter to ISS and set up a(or some) receiver(s) on the ground and periodically test how much power can actually reach the surface. Or Better yet, take an existing GEO sat bus, add extra solar panels to it, launch it with an existing GEO class launcher and put it into GEO sync orbit and just do a simple demo SSP that is just a proof of concept to test out how much power can truly be transmitted from space. Load the sat up with all kinds of health monitoring systems. Maybe even a few cameras to observe the degrading of the solar panels. Also use different kinds of panels to test out different material combinations. The power would be marinal, but it would offer us some hard data points to play with, and if you stick with off the shelf, or as off the shelf you can get with GEO sat hardware. It should not be too expensive to do?

As for Obama's space plan getting us a step closer to SSP?
http://www.redstate.com/hogan/2010/07/06/nasa-from-the-moon-to-mecca/
Yeah, right.

This isn't the only time that Bolden has made some questionable statements:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kHDGIPSBMk
True, he denies he said 'Bail out', but he does say that he will do anything to make sure they succeed. How Commerical is Commerical if you have to bail it out?

I have to admit that as much as I like VSE, I wasn't a big fan of what is called "The program of record" I think the Ares 1 is a mistake, several years back when the first announced the design and said they were going to spend 4.5 billion on it. I thought the money would have been better spent by spliting the cash up between Space X, to fund the Falcon 9/Dragon and Boeing & LM so they could do whatever Vodoo you do to make their EELVs 'human rated', design the Orion capsule to work with either EELV, so if one of them goes 'Boom' or if/when the Falcon goes 'Boom', we have a back up launcher to switch the Orion too. Heck if you want talk with ESA and make it compatible with their Araine launcher, that would give even more redunancy! Have them lease/rent the capsule from us, we get an extra revenue stream and they get a crewed capsule without all the messy development costs, its a potential win-win.
The problem I have with Obama's space plan, is the same thing we had with the Shuttle program and the same with the Ares 1, they would be are only crewed access to space. Right now, Space X IS the Commerical Human Space Flight industry. Their nearest compeditor, Orbital, only has a progress style cargo spacecraft that only takes stuff up to the station and burns up on reentry! Its irronic that Orbital who has more experience at launching spacecraft, than Space X which is the new kid on the block. Though I don't think that Orbit has launched anything approaching the size of either a Mercury or Gemini capsule let alone a crewed vehicle.
Here are some more interesting discussions on the Commerical space flight:

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1648/1

http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1655/1

Another thing that bother's me about Obama's plan, at first the Orion was completely canceled, now it back in a lite version that will be used as a lifeboat, for crew return only in emergency. But that means you still have to get it up there in the first place which means you will need to launch it unmanned on some ELV/EELV. So why not just go ahead and launch your crews that way! I posted that question to sci.space.policy and got some conflicting answers one person said that the heavy lift version of an EELV won't be able to loft the Orion and its LAS while another person came back with some figures that it could.

Thats just my $0.02

Keith Wetzel