Panel Discussion on The Downlink podcast regarding NASA’s Space-Based Solar Power Report
This is an AI-generated transcript of the interview from January 11, 2024 between the host Laura Winters, Dr. John Mankins, Peter Garretson and our CTO Dr. Ed Tate.
https://podcasts.apple.com/in/podcast/space-tech-is-nasa-surrendering-the-promise-of/id1590387089?i=1000641532915
Peter Garretson 0:02
You know, it's been discussed, you know, at multiple high-level forums. So, I'll tell you this NASA report will not be making any friends with ESA, JAXA, Space Force, AFRL, or US companies. I mean, really the signal is that US companies should go overseas; don't expect any help from NASA.
Laura Winter 0:23
From the defense and aerospace report, this is The Downlink, a podcast about the intersection of space, the space business and defense, not just what's over the horizon. But what's happening above it. I'm your host, Laura Winter.
Hey, there Downlink listeners. This week, NASA finally released its space based solar power report. It's nearly 16 months late. And we can't ignore the fact that in those months, China, Britain, Japan and the European Space Agency, which is often called ESA, they haven't waited around for the United States. Instead, they've been making strides in developing space based solar power technology, the policy, the commercial partnerships, real industrial plans with real capital and human effort put to them all of this activity without the United States.
And this NASA report in this current draft, and I say that because rumors are it's been rewritten since first being finished in 2022. This report, according to our guests, is a cautionary exhibit depicting how a storied national space agency and a leading space power voluntarily surrenders its leadership position. If you have the inclination, read the NASA document. It’s simply titled “space-based solar power”. And if you do that you will find before the appendices 33 pages of tortured text. And that's the tip-off that what awaits readers like experts, policymakers, legislators and their coteries of advisors on the Hill, the ones who hold the budgetary pen, it should be clear to them that this report is somewhat off-kilter, somewhat attenuated, and you don't have to be a space nerd to get it. In fact, if you've listened to well, let's just say the last three months of this podcast technology episodes, what is missing is what NASA knows is technologically possible now, and what space-based solar power would cost in today's dollars. This is an important report that could have far reaching and strategic ramifications to the economy to industry and to national defense on Earth, as well as in the space domain to explain the technology and what this report means.
(For today’s discussion) we have Peter Garretson, John Mankins, and Ed Tate. If after listening to this episode, you want to dive even deeper look for the three episodes on space based solar power in August and September of 2022. Now, here's our conversation.
Hello, John, Peter, and Ed. Thank you, guys so much for making the time on such short notice to join me today on the downlink podcast.
John Mankins: Thank you, Laura, for having us.
Peter Garretson: It's great to be here.
Ed Tate: (says hello, initially muted)
Laura Winter: Now, before we get to the news, and that's NASA's space-based solar power report, let's take a moment to have you guys introduce yourselves and Peter, as you are the regular here. Why don't you start?
Peter Garretson 3:38
Well, thank you, Laura. I'm Peter Garretson. I'm a Senior Fellow in defense studies at the American Foreign Policy Council, where I'm co-director of our Space Policy Initiative. And I've written a couple of books, both of which deal in part with space solar power: “scramble for the skies”, the great power competition to control the resources of outer space, and “the next space race” a blueprint for American primacy. And also, I was the lead author of the 2008 Pentagon study on space solar power that recommended we should have a national program quite a while ago, and Ed you’re next.
Ed Tate 4:10
Thanks for your introduction. I am Dr. Edie Tate. I am the CTO with Virtus Solis. We are a commercial company that's working on commercialization of space based solar. We've got a plan to make it happen within this decade. I come from a background of high-volume manufacturing; (I) spent 20 years in automotive working electrification, high-volume manufacturing, and design. I've got 10 years of scientific software and design automation that was done after that. And for the past four years, I've been working on space-based solar, the past two years have been full-time. And in that time, we've built prototypes of wireless power transfer systems and done public demonstrations at (the) 100-meter mark showing that wireless power actually works. And this is one of the key technologies underneath space-based solar. We've done a lot of analyses that are actually related to what we're going to talk about today. So, if anybody's interested. I'm a very prolific (Poster on LinkedIn) and we also repost over on our website.
Laura Winter 5:03
And hey, Ed, when did you and John Bucknell actually found your company?
Ed Tate 5:10
It was founded four years ago. So, it was founded in 2019. But it took two years for us to go through and do the initial analysis to say, “Yeah, this actually works”, and complete the engineering and then put together a business plan and get our first investors. So, in November of 2021, we were officially full time, we were a funded startup. And two months after that, we had our first wireless power demo working.
Laura Winter 5:37
Awesome. And now last, but certainly not least, is you, John. And I don't even know where to start because the only one who predates you on space based solar power is the science fiction author, Isaac Asimov. Now, your nonfiction book, “The Case for Space Solar Power”. It was published 10 years ago, this month. So first, congratulations on this anniversary. And with that, take a moment and introduce yourself.
John Mankins 6:09
Thank you, Laura. So as Laura said, my name is John Mankins. I was with NASA for 25 years, 10 years at JPL. 15 years at NASA headquarters. I worked in flight projects and spacecraft systems engineering, and advanced studies. But I spent most of my time managing Advanced Technology Research and Development at NASA, (where I) used to run a billion dollar ... per year portfolio. I was the Chief Technologist for human spaceflight for a while, if anybody who listens to the podcast is familiar with technology readiness levels, the “TRLs”, as they're called, I wrote the (detailed) definitions for the technology readiness levels back in the 90s. And I did and led a whole series of advanced concept studies while I was at NASA, most famous of which had to do with space solar power, and (which) led eventually, after I left NASA, to my coming up with a new architectural approach for space solar power involving very high levels of modularity and mass production. I know we'll talk about later, mass production of the spacecraft systems as an approach to driving down space mission costs drops drastically. And I'm sure we'll talk more about all of that.
But I (also) want to do a shout out to two people who were real giants in the field. Peter Glaser (of Arthur D. Little) who invented the solar power satellite as a system design back in the 60s, and Bill Brown of Raytheon who did the first practical technology demonstration of wireless power transmission; both of them great gentleman, great visionaries now gone, but it's necessary whenever when speaking of the subject to remember (them), so thanks.
Laura Winter 8:15
now John, I want to start this opening segment with you because The Downlink’s audience has you know, grown and there are probably a number of folks out there that don't know that one of the two concepts the authors of this (NASA) report used in their comparative study was your solar power satellite Alpha mark three or “SPS Alpha Mark-III”, just to create our own kind of baseline. Could you briefly explain how the SPS Alpha Mark-III would work, how much it would cost and how quickly we could get it into operation John. So,
John Mankins 8:54
A solar power satellite is the concept of putting a large satellite in space, which will intercept sunlight, where the sun shines almost all the time, and send that energy converted into (usually) low intensity microwaves to markets on the earth 24/7, 365. And that way space solar power can complement and augment terrestrial solar power, which of course only provides energy (and at) really low costs when the sun is shining, or with the associated energy storage systems. My particular concept “SPS ALPHA” (refers) to “solar power satellite by means of arbitrarily large phased array”, (which) is a highly-scalable, highly-modular system in which you go from one or 10 or 1,000 pieces that make up a system like the International Space Station. to an architecture which is like a living organism, like a beehive or a colony of ants, in which you literally have hundreds of 1,000s to millions of modules that take the incoming sunlight, convert it into electricity, convert it again into radio waves, and then send it (as) low intensity microwaves to the Earth. SPS ALPHA is unusual, or at least was when it was first proposed some dozen years ago, in that it is very highly scalable: you can build an SPS alpha at a few 100 kilowatts, and it would work fine with a given set of modules. And you can take it all the way up to 1000s of kilowatts to megawatts and gigawatts of power with the same kinds of basic modules. You just make more of them and plug more of them together. So that's the basic idea.
Laura Winter 10:56
Thank you so much for that. And because I think it is very important for this audience, which is really defense-oriented. Peter, you are a retired Air Force Colonel and a proponent of space based solar power, I want you to take a moment to clearly draw the lines between this technology and why it is so important to national security and international stability, Peter?
Peter Garretson 11:23
Sure. So, let's start with the second part of your question, international stability. If we assume that at some point in time, some nation is going to be successful in building solar power satellites. You want that nation to be a trustworthy nation, not the kind of nation that's going to just turn off your turn off the keys to it, like the pipeline going into Europe, because there's some issue.
Ed Tate 11:50
And so learn from Russia to be to be exact, right?
Peter Garretson 11:53
That's right, the pipeline from Russia. So, you know, I think you know, that, in a world where you want sort of stability, you'd really like to have technology like this in the hands of someone in the hands of a power that's interested in a rules-based order that's interested in open commerce. And that's interested in and maintaining a predictable rule set, and isn't an anti-status quo power. In terms of like the ramifications of the technology itself, I'll just point out that, you know, these systems that we're talking about are very, very large, you know, the International Space Station today produces little over 100 kilowatts, and it's about 400 metric tons. And, you know, we're talking about systems that once-deployed, you know, are close to 8000 metric tons, and produce gigawatts of power. And you have to realize that a nation that has an industrial base that can produce a two gigawatt system in orbit (of) 8000 metric tons, has an amazing space mobility and logistics system has an amazing launch system and cadence, inability to go to space, that has access to tremendous amounts of power in space, as well as fleets that can go anywhere they need to go also, with high power. So, you know, to put it bluntly, a nation that can build a solar power satellite, their space force can crush a nation that doesn't have that kind of capability.
Laura Winter 13:32
Thank you so much for illustrating that. So now, let's jump into the report. All three of you were either named in this report personally, or your company was. So, I think it's pretty appropriate to get your take on his findings, especially from your particular perspectives. And for that I'd like for you at to start off this segment of the discussion by answering what does this report actually say to you and Virtus Solis? What is NASA and obviously, by extension, the White House communicating?
Ed Tate 14:06
So, when you look at the report, there are two different things that the report focused on, which was the impact that space solar could have on net zero and CO2 reduction. The other was on what would impact it would have on the cost of electricity. And they took a viewpoint of looking at it from two bookends. The first bookend (assumes) we do business as usual. We do things the way we're doing them now and put something in orbit and they validate, “yeah, this can be done”. (There are) technical objections, you know, (but) there's really nothing that can't be built. But it's only going to be competitive and very select markets if we do business as usual. Now, they did say, if we take and we actually innovate, we do the things that need to be done to improve hardware durability, to improve launch costs to improve the (operations) of the designs, then some very amazing things happen and the price of this comes down. And in fact, even within this report, they validate that the price can be competitive with the cheapest electricity in terms of both cost and in terms of CO2 abatement. So that's great, that is fantastic. The challenges that are in there is that the path that you're going to take to get from one end to the other, the Balkans, the other is that they also acknowledged and even in the analysis they did, they only looked at two architectures. So, there's a whole universe of solutions that are out there right now, many of which, you know, can drive cost much, much lower. And we've got our particular approach that we're looking at, we think will come in much cheaper to get the very first what's on the ground. And there are others that are out there that are saying that they can do competitive numbers today, you know, with the design approaches are taking. So we think the the numbers that were brought in there were extremely conservative, they represent something, which is you do everything with what you have right now. And yes, you can get there, but the costs don't come out competitive. So that's the first piece. The second piece is it has some recommendations on how NASA could help bootstrap this activity as an engineering and a commercial enterprise. One was that they could continue to support developing support technologies. I mean, you're going to need lift, you're going to need in-space assembly, you're going to need materials, and a host of other things that would support getting this to work. So, NASA can just continue to run the programs are doing now that overlap about 80% with what's needed to make happen here. They also said that they could do specific budget items that would support space-based solar. And you know, we wholly support those recommendations, we think those are things that will be very important on pushing investors to go yeah, this is something real, yes, there is. validation from these agencies that this is something that is worthwhile, it's coming, it can be done. And very importantly, by having these kinds of investments that are available to commercial startups, it provides that non-dilutive capital, that helps get a deep tech organization up and running much easier and faster. So, we see it as this validates it can be done, no serious technical objections were brought up. And if things were done, right, the prices become incredibly competitive with power on the ground. Now, I do want to put one counter up there, which is they focus very heavily on the levelized cost of energy. And I think there's a lot more that needs to be considered there. But I'm (going to) leave that bug in your ear. And I'll pass the mic back.
Laura Winter 17:24
Awesome. And what about for you, Peter? What's your initial take?
Peter Garretson 17:28
So Laura, my initial take is this reminds me so much of the Secretary of the Air Force's inflated cost estimate for the Space Force in order to scare the White House and Congress so that they wouldn't have to do what they didn't want to do. And although you certainly can find things in this (report) that are, in fact, very favorable to the technology path: they just somehow couldn't (quite) hide it. You know, they appeared to have taken a year to bury it under the weakest possible language as possible. So, it seems to me to bend over backwards to miss the point and say, “you know, don't look here”. Now, if you remember what happened with the malicious compliance leaked-report, it backfired in that it created intense interest that actually pushed the White House and the Congress even further to create a space force. And given the extreme violent reaction I'm seeing from other people across the community to this report, and the very unkind language being used (toward) it, it wouldn't surprise me if it ends up doing exactly the opposite of what it appears to intend. But, you know, here's the thing that is very clear from the language: it's that there is no ambition in this report, right. This report was not even meant to address national policy or speak to the White House or the White House top priorities right. This is not a report to the Vice President or the National Space Council. You know, it is a report to NASA leadership, you know, where they are very clear that NASA could maintain its focus on core agency missions while documenting their relevance to SSP or that NASA may want to focus only on its current and planned mission needs. But despite that, you know, buried on page 10 Is this bottom line that basically says that there is absolutely believable – like no magic here at all –– a believable path to a clean energy Solution at three cents a kilowatt hour, and a lower greenhouse gas than nuclear or wind. If you if like SpaceX only achieves a fifth it's starship, its target for starship if you just use electric propulsion, which I think is already in the part of the SBS Alpha plans. And if you lengthen the lifespan to just what we're already seeing for current geo objects of 15 years, not even I mean, that's an extreme minimum. So, you know, it just seems to me extremely disconnected from national strategy also unbelievably disconnected from Artemis, when you look at what isa put out in the same timeframe, very ambitious architectural study about, you know, in space resource utilization. For this, it seems disconnected from the ISAM (in-space assembly and manufacturing) strategy. And it just sees no real leadership role for NASA at all. So, I found that to be extremely disappointing that rather than saying, like, here are the target things that could be addressed, and here's what we should be addressing. In fact, they chose not to make a recommendation at all. And in fact, not only even though they had a very conceivable pathway to make it very cost competitive, they chose to highlight their baseline, with this order of magnitude more costs than the ESA (European Space Agency) studies to have the same result.
John Mankins 21:09
(Relative to the cost in ESA’s studies) two orders of magnitude (greater costs).
Peter Garretson 21:13
Two orders of magnitude, right. And then they chose to situate it in 2050. Right, as opposed to like ESA, that wants to be doing 10% of European energy (using space solar) in like 2040. Right. So, they've already in the habit of writing taken themselves out of the administration's goal. So like this, this was, I mean, to me, it's just like, you have tried really, really hard, you know, to put yourself completely off the radar of the White House with a scary number, and a scary year.
Laura Winter 21:51
John?
John Mankins 21:52
Yeah, so on the one hand, it is a very interesting report, from the standpoint of the efforts that were taken to make space solar power, particularly with the modular approach, which came (from) the SPS ALPHA approach that came out of a NASA-funded study, to take that and make it look as bad as possible. So, I want to highlight just a couple of things. One, which and a couple of these, Peter referred to, so in the baseline numbers that are presented the cost, and they only focus on (a single) solar power satellite. So, (would you) only build one Hoover Dam (and then) you never build another dam anywhere? (Suppose) there's only one. And in the fixed costs, the upfront costs, which I wanted to just read to you from the report, the upfront cost is specified at something like $300 billion for their system.
Laura Winter 22:53
Yeah, that's seven star, you know, Mediterranean yacht levels.
John Mankins 23:01
Right. But at that, at that price, over half of the cost is for something that was not in the SPS ALPHA study, which is a maintenance requirement, which is 150, or 160 billion out of that total. But the assumed lifetime of the platform is only 10 years, the actual SPS output and their numbers are too high, but they're not too high by that much. There. It's like they got like 10 billion to build the SPS ALPHA platform, that's not an entirely unreasonable number. But then they assume in 2050, that the cost of launch will be the same as today. So about $1,500 (per) kilogram. And their (baseline) goal (is) for a starship is to get to this by (26) years from today's 2024. So, by a little less than 30 years from now, to get the cost of launch down to $500 a kilogram, which is still five times more than what Elon (Musk) is saying he's going to be able to do by 2030. So, their baseline (launch cost) is 15 times more (than stated by SpaceX). They they've made some other weird assumptions. Like (they propose using) a starship to go to GEO (geostationary Earth orbit) not just a low Earth orbit (LEO). And they propose each time you launch a payload to GEO, you reuse the booster stage and you throw away the starship that goes to (GEO and then) don't reuse it? Another one I love: not only (do) they want to spend 150 billion on maintenance for a system that's only going to live for 10 years, but in addition, they want to charge extra 10s of billions (of dollars) for disposing of the satellite, as though anybody in their right mind will launch 1000s of tons of aluminum of silicon, steel, copper, gold, gallium arsenide and so on and so on, into space in GEO or beyond in cislunar space, and then throw it away. (Just to be clear): you're never going to throw away a solar power satellite, you're always going to recycle it and reuse it for lunar bases (or) for asteroid mines, and Mars cities and for other solar power satellites. And these I have to say, these assumptions drive the numbers: they lead to these outrageously high (costs).
And whereas a little (bit of) that (cost), sort of the core of it is still the modular heliostat concept based on SPS ALPHA, or the sandwich module-based concept that was looked at by the Japanese, there are no new references. From after about 2006, with the exception of one of my papers, from 2021, there had been literally hundreds of studies and reports work by people like Edie, and, and, and Vertu Solis and, and by the Japanese, and by the Europeans. And so all of these things are somehow just set aside, except in a couple of footnotes, and everything goes back to references things I did in the 90s. And I have to say, I know a lot more about space solar power today than I did in the 90s. And that's, that's enough rant for the moment. But I have one more (thought). If I can get in one more real quick: I just want to share one quotation from the report because it's so epitomizes this feeling. (The authors) are talking about mass production, like as done in Starlink. And they basically, in the report, they set it aside saying, yeah, maybe costs will be lowered with producing space hardware in factories, like was (achieved with) Starlink, but we don't have any evidence that that would be true. And we cannot assume this will be the case until it happens.
Laura Winter 27:14
Which is a perfect segue into Ed, by the way, because this is that is where they are squarely in Ed's wheelhouse. So back to you, Ed: as you know, let's dig a little deeper here. What does the report get wrong? I mean, that is obviously a start, there's going to be, you know, manufacturing at scale here on Earth, but there's also manufacturing at scale in space.
Ed Tate 27:44
So there's a couple of (thoughts), I'd like to back up on and just start with, I think they don't fully capture the value that firm, clean, renewable energy has bringing it down to the ground. So, one of the things that's happening right now is even though solar gets cheaper, wind gets cheaper, year by year, the cost of making firm power keeps going up. And with that, that means we have to put batteries into the system, we have to put trillions into transmission systems to try to move the power from where it's produced, when it's produced to the customers that need to use it. And the value proposition for space based solar is quite frankly, it can produce the power when it's needed. And it can put it down close to the customers without needing continental scale transmission lines. In fact, the resource usage to move power on the ground about 200 kilometers, is the same amount of resources, you need to build the solar power satellites, in terms of conductors and all and to move the power from one end of a continent to another. You know, this is fundamentally a different capability that offers unique things and balancing the grid making the grid more resilient, and making the grid available when people need it. And that's completely buried in the use of LCOE, the levelized cost of energy, rather than looking at the full value it has like in spot price marketing and things like that. So just with that out of the way. I think that's something that's missed in the report. And it's simplified to LCD. Now, the other issues that are there. John did a great job, I think of digging into the things that are there. When I read through the report, things that really stuck out is they assumed tenure life for the arrays for the satellites, and the fact that satellites would have to be refurbished every 10 years. And the cost of refurbishment dwarfed the cost of the initial deployment of the satellite. So, the numbers are like on the order of you know, they're like 10 to 15 billion to build first of a kind, which these are still hard higher numbers than others are predicting right now. Then they have on the order of like 100 billion to get the first system up. But then since you have to refurbish it twice in the 30 years that you're building this for, you're basically launching the satellite three times into orbit. And that doesn't line up with the experience that most of the satellites are having today. We have 35-year old satellites right now in orbit in GEO that have been able to operate, do their mission and are still up there. So why 10 years was chosen as lifespan for this is a little bit tough, unless it has something to do with looking back at the old 1980 documents where the 1980s systems require refurbishment, like literally daily. And it's completely irrelevant to doing solid state, high reliability electronics that we didn't have to build today and 20 2040 years later. The other pieces that stuck out is there's no appreciation for what rights law and some of these other economic things that we've learned how to do with getting prices down. I think SpaceX has done a fantastic job of driving the cost down. But quite frankly, you can plot out their prices that they have been able to put into place. And it follows these industrial rules that have been known forever. And it's quite simply, if you can get your volumes up, each time you double your volume, you're going to get some rate that you're able to decrease cost. And the fundamental cost of building these things is raw materials like copper, silicon, glass, aluminum, these are fundamentally cheap materials. So, the design and the fabrication should drop down to very low prices and what high-volume manufacturing gets us. And so we don't think that really was taken care of in the report very well. And the final pieces and they have it in writing, they said, Hey, we only looked at two architectures. And they literally say there may be other architectures out there that can drive the price down wildly compared to what we looked at. And that's the opportunity that's out there to really push this down in a much shorter timeframe.
Laura Winter 31:33
But Ed, I also want you to bring something else to the table, because your company is, you know, in the trenches of this, right? You guys are testing, you guys have designs, you guys are thinking about launch, you very specifically are thinking about manufacturing. So let's say just today, you know, somebody walked through the door, and you know, was, you know, had the kind of money that Elon Musk from SpaceX has and says, right? Okay, what do you need? How much money? Do you need to get this thing? When can you get it up there? What will it produce? What would those numbers be?
Ed Tate 32:12
From an investment (point of view)? Okay, let me let me talk a little bit how this works is you need money upfront to do the engineering and the design. At a certain point, you're able to go to debt markets, you're able to ask for financing. And these are places where the government can come in, and they can help secure loans and things like that. And then finally, you get into something which is secured by the project to do you know, our numbers are on the order of hundreds of millions. So that gets you all the way to the point that you can then access the capital that you need to get something into orbit, billion and a half to between a billion and a billion and a half is what we think can be done. And John, you wanted to add an injection there real quick.
John Mankins 32:48
I just want to say (that) I concur fully (with Ed) on the general order of magnitude of (the) numbers. So, 10s of millions for initial tech, a couple of 100 millions-plus for (an) initial space (demonstration), (and) a small number of billions for an initial system. Ed’s numbers and my numbers track perfectly well.
Ed Tate 33:10
Yep. And we look at this, I look at this in terms of, I mean, you can build a car completely from scratch for between one to $6 billion. And that's something you produce hundreds of 1000s a year of that covers tooling that covers engineering. And that makes something is putting consumers hands that can last for the complexity you need for these highly modular designs is more on the order of something like your dashboard. You know, so we look at this and you look at what it takes, where do you look for other high-volume things that are going on. Now there (are) unique things in space. But it doesn't have fundamentally untenable challenges. Radiation is different. But we build electronics and sit next to engines we build electronics gets soaked in all kinds of fluids get covered in mud. These are all solvable problems, and they become high volume problems that become cheaper problems. And that's the fundamental piece we see that can be done that can drive these costs down very quickly. And the other one that's buried in this is these systems are very redundant. I've got potentially say, a million modular elements that all have to work together. And if I lose one, it has an imperceptible impact on the performance. If I lose 1000, it has an imperceptible, a million units, I can lose probably 10,000, before you'd even be able to start seeing in the noise, a little indicator your system doesn't behave. So inherently, these highly modular designs can be incredibly robust to manufacturing issues, robust to debris robust to failures in orbit. And when you're doing high volume manufacturing, you're able to sit and learn from that as it goes on and correct it. And as these systems scale out, they just simply get better with time. So, it's some fundamental pieces that are buried there that makes this a unique engineering thing that we can robustly build, we can robustly have issues in space. And it's not like there's any one single point of failure that will cause this thing to go down. So, It's from a deployment standpoint, it's wonderful to work with.
Laura Winter 35:04
So then, again, let's say I have just a ton of money. And, you know, I'm going to say, right, what do you need? How many people do you need? When do you need it? My question is going to be two, how soon can I actually have this thing up and operational? Seriously. They're using the (date) 2050 (for when space solar power could begin). And that just seems beyond comprehension. From everything that I've seen coming out of China. Everything I've seen coming out of Japan, and everything I've seen coming out of ESA, which I promise you 20 plus countries agreed to do something. Their number their year is even be well before 2050 by like, almost two decades, like seriously. So, when could we do this?
Ed Tate 35:49
Well, the hardest part is scaling up the supply chain. I mean, there's only so many square (meters), so many kilowatts of power that are produced each year by the silica by space-rated solar panel makers, there's only so many square meters of circuit board and other things that are appropriate for this that are in production. And there's only so many tons of lift capacity available now. However, there's, like 53 launch companies, I think right now that are trying to find a niche to serve. So launch capacity is going to be there if they're convinced, and they can convince investors is going to happen. Space based photovoltaics, that can be scaled up in about three years. Launch can be scaled up in about three years. And all of these just come down to one set of commitments put upfront, and these other supply chain issues can be spun up, you're looking at about three years, there's about a three year lead on all of this to get down to the getting the first systems that parts in place. And then the assembly times are very, very fast. I mean, it's about 18 months of permitting to actually put something on the ground, we actually have a partner right now that we're working with that we know where we're going to cite our first receiver. It's about a two-year lead three year lead to get something just for a Leo demo. And if you've got the money and you put the deposits down, you can probably even get the capacity lined up right now to get something into orbit. John, you want to add a point,
John Mankins 37:05
If you if you take as a fact, that space based solar powered microwave frequency RF systems are all pretty darn similar components, (let’s) use as an analogy ‘Starlink’ (from SpaceX). And in that case, SpaceX flew their first reusable Falcon 9 reusable launcher in 2015, and a small number of years later, (when) they made a decision that they were going to get into the direct communications market, they converted one of their factories to make Starlink (satellites) and 12 or 18 months later, they started cranking 30 metric tons a month of Starlink satellites off the production line and launching them on Falcon 9 Reusables. They're now up to (something like) 4500 satellites, they've gone to the second or third generation, but approximately they have 4500 satellites. (These total) something like 10 megawatts of solar power in space, driving an RF system that is about four to five times bigger than the International Space Station. And they've done it in (roughly) four years. Now let's suppose that the modular approach to space solar power is right, that putting these things together is not harder than warehouse robotics. And that somebody else does it first. And if you could go in, say, four or five years, not 25 years, not decades, but years from I'm (saying is needed) to really do this and investing a few 100 million dollars (which is practically nothing in terms of global security interests, or global industry for that matter). And (that) whoever that player is, by 2030 has the launcher, has the system, and starts deploying every year megawatts of space solar power growing to 1000s of megawatts of space, solar power. What does that mean, both industrially in space and in terms of national security?
That's my “tee-up” for Peter Garretson: Peter, how about it in terms of technological surprise?
Peter Garretson 39:30
Well, I couldn't agree more. I mean, I think we're going to see several surprises, Sputnik, like surprises related to space solar power with the deployment of the PRC systems. And I think the way to think about this is very similar to how far behind we were in 5g and how, you know, the Chinese have really gone after infrastructure, you know, as their approach to competitive strategy. And if you think about, you know, the scaling factor you Know that ad talked about being able to basically, you know, really move in about three years towards scale, and the potential to scale and the true potential to reduce costs. And then you think about the first mover advantages that you get, particularly if you lock in initial markets, and others are paying to further reduce, you know, your, you know, your fixed costs, the ability to rapidly get behind in this is, is tremendous. And, you know, it goes to even really small things: (what happens once) another country (has), you know, the dominant share of space photovoltaics, which, you (may) know, (the US has) a tenuous hold on now, even though we've lost all other forms of photovoltaics, we have a tenuous lead in the United States on advanced space rated solar cells? Same thing for electric propulsion, probably a lot of things, you know, (that go into a space solar power system, such as) the computer Robotic Operating System, you know.
So, losing out on space solar power is not just losing out on space solar power, is very likely losing out on a huge part of your industrial base. And if space solar power is economically successful, the scale of launch and the launch facilities to launch it, so far dwarf the entire rest of the launch market. (As a result), you're very likely to, to lose your entire launch business. The United States could rapidly go from being you know, the number one country that has the most commercial space launch, to, you know, being forced back into the position of Russia or India, where (those countries) basically are subsidizing (their) international space launch (industries). Because you, you know, nobody else really wants to buy it unless you're going to subsidize it to provide friendly prices. So, you know, the consequences of (missing out on) something that can scale like space solar power are dire (as is the) inability of the report authors to see this. I mean, it's kind of crazy to me that NASA would write a report that in every way says, “please don't give me any money for this. Please don't give me a funding line for this. Please don't ask me to do any more on it.
And, I don't even want to mention the fact that there's an ISR tie in, you know, just please make this all go away, you know, shows how a strategic the Office of Technology and Science Policy and NASA leadership actually is and how tremendously disconnected they are, from what is actually being asked of them by at least two administrations, with tremendous continuity of administrations on what they're wanting the role of NASA to be in helping to bring about a thriving space economy.
Laura Winter 43:04
Another large part of this report is devoted to the effects of greenhouse admissions. Right. And that's a big deal for the Biden administration. And by the way, I'm correct me if I'm wrong, Peter, but if you have such a report coming out, I mean, wouldn't the White House's OSTP as an Office of Science and Technology sign off on it? I mean, they wouldn't be unaware, would they?
Peter Garretson 43:28
You know, Laura, I don't know. I mean, my, you know, the rumors I heard was that there were at least two very different takes on this in the White House. And I honestly don't think it's ever been elevated to the National Space Council to even consider, which is bizarre, because, you know, this is like the number one policy priority of the Biden administration, you would think that, particularly with the partnership opportunities, you know, that the NASA administrator would be jumping up and down to tell the National Space Council about it. But the report itself only talks about the potential of supporting partners, not leading in 21st century jobs, not leaning in, you know, big projects for greenhouse gas emissions. It's incredibly the in fact, the challenges and opportunity section of the report only as challenges. There are no opportunities in it. So it's, you know, I'll let John inside.
John Mankins 44:33
I just want to add one other comment. I don't know whether or not the report ever went to the White House. My own feeling is that informally, it probably did. But that's a feeling that's not a that's not an assertion of any kind. But I'm going to say that it was definitely developed with an eye towards the priorities of the Biden administration. It's like every other chart on every other page is somehow focused on assuring the outside community, especially the Biden White House, this is nothing going on that useful for climate change. Don't look at space solar power; (it) is so terrible and is going to produce so much more greenhouse gases than even coal, that it's impossible to look at this as a possible part of our climate portfolio. It is staggeringly clear that that's a message.
Ed Tate 45:39
Oh, come on, you know, they saw it. Oh, you know, they saw it because this stuff goes to the National (Space) Council. I mean, I'm sorry, but you know, at least three of us here have worked for the US government in various forms. And come on, we all know that this stuff gets coordinated. Because if it doesn't get coordinated, your ass is in, you know, somebody's crosshairs. Great. Go for it.
Okay, just one thing that was kind of disappointing in looking at how they did the CO2 analysis, I mean, they did embedded energy, it looked like the embedded energy to collect the energy mix we have today, they looked at only methane rockets, I didn't look at hydrogen rockets. I mean, if that was really a priority, there are very small tweaks that can be done in the study they did, that could have driven the CO2 numbers almost down to the ground. And something that was actually I thought missing, which would have been a very important one to put in front of decision makers is the energy return on investment. I mean, just back of the envelope numbers show that put building space based solar, it's the energy equivalent of mining uranium out of the ground. I mean, literally, the energy and a space based solar thing that we build is identical to digging up uranium out of the ground unprocessed. And the second one is that... (Did you want to) say something, John?
John Mankins 46:52
I was going to say, but all of the additional numbers, hundreds of billions of dollars worth of equipment for maintenance, and servicing and disposal, and debris management. That's how the numbers for the carbon emissions were driven up, it didn't have anything to do with the actual solar power satellite, it had to do with all the fixed infrastructure that was piled on to this one solar power satellite, and even all of those numbers are not right.
Laura Winter 47:23
And the assumption also seems to mean that all these materials and in their basic form would somehow originate from Earth with it, which completely ignores what's going on in the ISAM / OSAM community right now.
Peter Garretson 47:41
So I do want to address that point. Let me give it back to Ed in just a second, though, because I mean, to me, this was absolutely stunning. So you have a national cislunar policy that outright says that we want to do massive manufacturing on the moon and want to lead it in public private partnerships, right. You've got an ISAM strategy and implementation strategy that want to do this at scale. You've got national policy that wants to use ISRU (in situ resource utilization) and you have national direction to go to the South Pole of the Moon, to develop the precursors for an industrial civilization. And somehow this report completely fails to tie it to NASA Moon to Mars objectives to ISRU objectives. It's just stunning that they could leave out, which is even more stunning, because in the 70s, NASA did an amazing study on using lunar resources to build solar power satellites. And there has been significant research, including in collaboration with John since and it was mentioned in you know, both the nsso report in 2008, and the IAC, IAEA international assessment. So, it's not like this idea isn't out there. And then during the long, long period of rewrite nearly a year to change I’m glad that ESA put out a phenomenal architecture study on the use of lunar resources to build solar power satellites at scale on I think, a sooner timeline than this. And somehow this report doesn't even mention any of that, or assess any of that, which I think is just a tremendous foul on NASA.
Speaker 1 49:39
Ed. You are you've been working with ESA folks and also with the UK.
Ed Tate 49:46
Yep. And both of them have come in and said that they can that space based solar makes sense. The ESA is in the process right now of trying to get a funded program coming into the late 2020s That would get demonstrators and things like that. Then place, the space energy initiative in the UK has got funding and has been pushing forward to get this with phenomenal demonstrations going on throughout the university system there. So, there is wireless power transfer demos, the University of Bristol, we're actually in a joint project with them on doing simulation of beams from orbit through the atmosphere. So that industry, academics and government officials can do this modeling and simulation and see how this stuff is really going to behave on a national or Continental basis. You know, so they have put money where their mouth is to advance the art on this, you know,
Laura Winter 50:35
They are not the only ones. I mean, Saudi Arabia, also, as part of this thing with UK, they have an agreement to actually, you know, use space based solar power, if I'm not mistaken, to power a city in the middle of the desert that hasn't even been built yet. But they've signed the contract.
Peter Garretson 50:54
Right. You know, I mean, this, this was even something that was, you know, discussed at the latest cop. You know, it's been discussed, you know, at multiple high-level forums. So, I'll tell you, this NASA report will not be making any friends with ESA JAXA, Space Force AFRL, or US companies. I mean, really the signal that said is US companies go overseas, don't expect any help from NASA.
Ed Tate 51:21
Absolutely.
Laura Winter 51:23
All right. So, I've got to ask this, maybe I'm naive to ask this next question. But, you know, we have been venting our spleens for quite a bit, because there's just so much to gripe about. But, you know, is there anything in there that is positive that can be built upon and leverage to, you know, get the technology that you Peter have repeatedly said, is of civilizational importance? Peter? Is there anything extra thing?
Peter Garretson 51:58
Yes, I think so, actually. So first of all, there, there are a few things that they do in their methodology, where they, you know, put it into phases, where they put it into two, you know, areas that I think, and it's one of the lines in the report buried in the report, you know, I think, actually in the appendices is that, you know, these challenges could serve as prizes that NASA could provide. So, you know, that is excellent. I think just laying these mostly terrible assumptions on the table, invites a hornet's nest of others to come after it red team this and provide way, way better answers. I do think that at least the starting place that it gives to do a lifecycle carbon analysis will be useful in in serious people interested in promoting SSP in creating the models for Emeril and DOE to actually be part of the climate models that are used by the White House and by the United Nations. So, I think, you know, those are useful. And I think, frankly, without meaning to, you know, they have really sort of hinted at where a bunch of opportunities are, right. So also buried in there are like, hey, you know, if tugs were this cheap, and some of these companies are, you know, suggesting this, and, and the fact that they have highlighted these two, really sort of three major concepts for deployment. Those don't exhaust the deployment ideas. And so I think, you know, there are very clever people who have already thought through how SpaceX could reduce the number of Starships to put 1000s of metric tons on the moon, or to get 1000s of metric tons to Mars, through aggregation and, you know, going to higher elliptical orbits, I think there are lots of things. So, it wouldn't surprise me if, you know, the anger inspired (by) this report drives a diversity of smarter concepts.
Laura Winter 54:13
So then, where do we go from here? And they may, this may be different for all of you, right? Because, again, you all have uniquely different and mutually supporting perspectives. And, Ed, why don't you start that off? Where do we go?
Ed Tate 54:29
Well, where we are right now, I think is very important. That NASA report, even though there's some weaknesses we've identified, it did a couple of things. One is it said there's a path to making this the cheapest, cleanest energy. Number two, four years ago, we talked about it people were like the physics don't even work. What are you talking about? And this report didn't have any physics objections, or any engineering objections, merely economics. And economics is a sphere where commercial companies can come in and drive the prices down. The other ones are where do we go from here? It's Be great to see the federal government open up funding for advanced research on energy, other advanced topics inside of NASA to fund some of the fundamental pieces that are needed for this. And that helps get the investor community to come along. And that helps the commercial companies that are going after to make things happen that much faster.
Laura Winter 55:16
And, Peter, what about from your perspective? Where do we go from here?
Peter Garretson 55:20
Well, I think we're just ramping up. I mean, in the last month, a couple months, we've seen Congress actually put something, you know, in a bill, we've seen the Space Frontier Foundation, you start a dedicated project and put manpower against it. You know, I think this report is going to drive an enormous amount of visibility. And I think in many ways, the fact that its methodology is so questionable is it may likely gain us advocates that otherwise, you know, might have looked askance at a at a more positive report. And the last thing I would say is, you know, I'm hoping that the press that this gets, including from this podcast, will force this onto the agenda of the National Space Council.
Laura Winter 56:05
And John, as our space based solar power ‘sensei’, Where do we go from here?
John Mankins 56:10
I have done any number of systems studies on any number of system concepts. And methodologically, I don't really find any criticism here that I would say this or this (aspect) is flawed. I think the methodology and how it was done (is fine). I certainly have no objection to them looking at these two particular system concepts, one of which is mine. (But I would say that it is) like making cookies: (as) you know, you're supposed to have a pinch of salt instead of throwing in three cups of salt. So, it's not that the salt shouldn't be in there. It's just the balance in the findings, not the analysis. And frankly (concerning) the recommendations or conclusions and recommended futures study ideas for how NASA might proceed, I don't think there's anything wrong with any of those. That's pages 31 through 33, if anybody wants to have a look at it, but it's what they've decided to do with it, to make sure that the assumptions in this otherwise perfectly great methodology came out looking like hundreds of billions of extra dollars worth of infrastructure that nobody's working on, and nobody thinks are necessary. But were somehow just added in there, as though they came from the community, which they did not. (Those 100s of billions of dollars of infrastructure) were just added like three cups of salt in your batch of cookies.
Laura Winter 57:39
John, Peter, and thank you all so much for making the time to come on the downlink podcast.
John Mankins 57:45
Thank you, Laura. Laura, it was a pleasure. Thanks for the opportunity.
Ed Tate 57:49
Thank you very much. Appreciate the opportunity to talk about this. This was great.
Laura Winter 57:54
That's it for this week. If you like what you're hearing, follow the downlink on Twitter and subscribe to the podcast on your favorite podcast platform. For the latest defense news and analysis. Listen to the daily defense and aerospace report podcast hosted by Baba Murat Ian and listen to Kavis ships to hear the latest on what's happening in the maritime domain. I'm Laura winter, and thank you for listening.
