Short Beamed Energy SA

7/31/2019 Short Beamed Energy SA

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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)


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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


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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


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40 kg, but just scaling from MW

to GW, move to Equator, cover

mountain with gyrotrons, run 4

minutes out of 20, 11 milliontruck batteries, 5 years and they

die, but in that time 500 GW of

SBSP. Silly to send power down

and back up so . . . .


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4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

Percent payload (blue)

GW x 10 (orange)


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Hydrogen combustion to 25 km, &

Mach 5.5 Laser heated hydrogenabove 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)


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105 kW CW


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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 numberProfit more than $50/kg


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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


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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 BIncome @ $100/kg * 500,000 t $50 B/yr

Payback from profit 3-4 years.


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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


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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.


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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 couldbe mostly off fossil fuels in a

decade. (If anyone cares, that is.)


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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

le itimate reason to sort out uranium atoms


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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?


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Google henson oil drum for a

slightly out of date white paperon 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.


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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.


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OVERALL CONFIGURATION OF GEOSYNCHRONOUS

SPS (FROM DOE STUDIES)

SPACEBORNE

ARRAY

RECTENNA ON

EARTH


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