Solar Power Satellites: Summary of a workshop held at SPRAT-14

The Office of Advanced Concepts at NASA recently initiated a re-analysis of the 'Solar Power Satellite' (SPS) concept. The ground rule for the analysis was that a project of such size (and more particularly, cost) as the 1980 baseline concept is out of the question in today's world. The study questions are: (1) have technology improvements since the 1980 studies made SPS concepts more feasible?; and (2) are new architectures or concepts for SPS possible which would reduce the cost? These issues were posed to the workshop conducted at the SPRAT Conference, with the intent of soliciting input from experts on space photovoltaic technology.