Didn Robert Zubrin debunk this whole SPS/space settlements scenario in his book “Entering Space”?
Yes. His motivations may come closest to the surface when he states, “This grandiose vision has attracted numerous adherents, including Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the chairman of the House Space Subcommittee, and his aide Mr. Jim Muncy”. Congressman Rohrabacher has publicly stated his preference for NASA to build SPS, instead of doing “silly things like going to Mars”. When Zubrin factors in lack of cloudy atmosphere, and the ability to track the sun, together with conversion efficiencies, he calculates an orbital solar array would outperform a land-based one by a factor of 3. If the surface array is designed with sun-tracking panels, however, he estimates this factor would shrink to 1.5, and concludes this is too slim a margin to justify building the arrays in orbit. But this may be missing the point. The chief advantage of SPS over Earth-based arrays is not primarily that the orbital array can be smaller; although it is true (and Zubrin freely admits) that the SPS rectenna
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- Didn Robert Zubrin debunk this whole SPS/space settlements scenario in his book "Entering Space"?
