Tom:

I've not received EMail traffic from this SPS group for sometime but
that does not dampen my absolute support for its focus. Thank you for
posting the Solarbird link it is certainly one possibility for
starting the use of SPS's. My educational background is Aerospace
Engineering and while in school I learned much about SPS's. During
that time worked to gain funding through Congress in the late 1970's
for the NASA baseline SPS study.

Just a bit of history about the study is that it used the Shuttle as a
launch system and of course it was completely un-economic. The NASA
team was not market or profit oriented, too bad. It did document some
useful on orbit construction techniques but not much in the way of a
viable business model. Today's world demands Engineers know the
economics of what they suggest in addition to all the other
requirements like environmental concerns, safety, and usability
demanded by the market and government.

There are with out a doubt viable SPS applications and an suitable
accompanying business model out there somewhere. If I were to suggest
the one thing that is needed for SPS success it would be something
like for example an understanding the power gird operations and the
economics of that system. One good business model would change
everything.

Besides the power grid other applications could include temporary
remote power, disaster relief, military operations, cross continent
power relay, construction power supply, power backup, energy market
counter competition to OPEC, time zone rolling peak time of day power,
and think of a few more. Try writing business models for all of these.

I hope this stirs some thought.

BTW I have not been able to send an EMail to the list or to send a
reply. I do receive EMail sent by the list. I do not know it that
has to do with my Dynamic DNS setup or having to do with using a
particular EMail for myself.