Beamed Energy and $100/kg to GEO

On how power in space gives rise to low cost transport and how to get started Keith Henson (L5 Society)

Simple analysis
10 year return on capital, 80,000 hours $1600/kW can be paid back at 2 cents per kWh (Below coal to get market share) $200/kW rectenna, $900/kW parts and labor ($450 before transmission loss), $500/kW for transport to GEO At 5 kg/kW requires $100/kg or less to GEO

Cant be done with chemical fuel

Current $20,000/kg to GEO SpaceX $4,000/kg $1,000/kg 20t/1400t, 1.4% payload Skylon ~$1000/kg $500/kg 7t/300t, 2.3% payload

40 kg, but just scaling from MW to GW, move to Equator, cover mountain with gyrotrons, run 4 minutes out of 20, 11 million truck batteries, 5 years and they die, but in that time 500 GW of SBSP. Silly to send power down and back up so . . . .

Percent payload (blue) GW x 10 (orange)

60 50

40

30

20

10

0 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Hydrogen combustion to 25 km, & Mach 5.5 Laser heated hydrogen above that point (laser beamed down from GEO)
3.4 GW of laser Performance analysis, 54 t to LEO Vehicle 24 t, (20% structure) plus 30 t second stage to LEO 2/3rd of second stage to GEO (20 t)

105 kW CW

Cost breakdown
Vehicle amortization $10/kg Hydrogen $6/kg Laser $50 B (written off in 5 years) $10 B/0.5 B kg is $20/kg $36/kg, well under the $100/kg number Profit more than $50/kg

Getting started (Building a seed laser)

small scale, 500 MW @ 10 kg/kW 5000 tons, Falcon Heavy @ 20 t per flight 250 flights at 0.1 B/flight, $25 B $5 B laser at $10/W 500 days at a launch every other day

Completing 3.4 GW
$ 34 B laser/power sat parts, 17,000 tons 60 scale vehicles, 5 tons to GEO 20 flights per day, 170 days, 2 years total Transport cost @ $100/kg $1.7 B Total cost $50-100 B Income @ $100/kg * 500,000 t $50 B/yr Payback from profit 3-4 years.

Falcons can't build power sats but they can build a large and expensive laser
3.4 GW electric power at 2 cent per kWh is worth $480 M/yr 3.4 GW of laser propulsion is worth $50 B/yr >100 times as much

Part 4 This makes a business case

It closes the business case for making 2 cent per kWh power and we know there is plenty of market at that price (TWs) It solves energy, energy security and carbon problems (carbon neutral synthetic fuel for a dollar a gallon) Even at two cents per kWh it makes huge profits to support growth.

Growth: 100GW/year, ten percent (10 GW) used for more propulsion, triples the cargo capacity to 1.5 M t/y, 300 GW/year. Triple that and the expansion rate is almost a TW/year.

It's possible that humanity could be mostly off fossil fuels in a decade. (If anyone cares, that is.)

It costs perhaps 10% of what a war with Iran would cost

SDI with the USSR or Russia was/is a losing business. It will be decades before Iran could overwhelm a multi GW propulsion laser and by that time the commercial demand for laser propulsion should be in the tens of GW Cheap power from space removes any legitimate reason to sort out uranium atoms

BUTIt is too big to do without major government backing

And oil, coal and gas industries will lobby against a real solution. (Maybe not) So why should a government consider backing it?

Google henson oil drum for a slightly out of date white paper on this topic
Part 1 months ago Part 2 and 3 a few weeks ago Part 4 last week This is unlikely to be the final evolution of the idea.

Why Airdrop at 10 km
Large Landing gear reduction Max landing is 54 tons, 120 t less 76 tons of LH2 dumped in an abort.

OVERALL CONFIGURATION OF GEOSYNCHRONOUS SPS (FROM DOE STUDIES)

SPACEBORNE ARRAY

RECTENNA ON EARTH