solarpowersatelliteplace@yahoogroups.com wrote:

>
>Group newbie here saying hello. Does anyone have a progress report (or any news
>whatsoever) on Mitsubishi's Solarbird SPS project? Their (very limited) English
website
>(http://global.mitsubishielectric.com/bu/space/topics/solar/) quotes a launch
date of
>"2005." However, the website is from 2003. Any news would be appreciated...
>
>
>
I attended the SPS'04 meeting in Granada this past summer, and we had
quite a contingent there from Japan, including a number of people from
Mitsubishi. I didn't hear the name "Solarbird" though, but they're
clearly very interested.

I need to write up my notes on the meeting. Here's a summary of the
Japanese contributions though:

There are basically two major government-sponsored groups working on
this in Japan, with strong political
support. One is under JAXA (the space agency since October 2003), which
is under the science ministry (MEXT). The other
group has the odd name "unmanned space experiment free flyer" or USEF,
and is under the economic, trades, and industry ministry (METI). Both
are doing some important work, both seem to be funded with at least a
few million dollars/year right now, and they both have similar schedules
for R&D and commercialization:

2009-2010: 50 to 100 kW engineering test/tech demo, in LEO
2015-2018: 10 MW prototype (LEO)
2025 or so: 250 MW pilot system (GEO) - this was only mentioned by USEF
2030 or earlier: 1 GW commercial system (GEO)

USEF seems focused on microwave studies; JAXA has one group looking at a
microwave system (connected to the power grid) and one group looking at
direct-pumped solid-state lasers (their proposal involved a floating
platform to receive the laser energy and use it to extract hydrogen from
sea water). USEF is also very much into the robotics issues, and automation.

Besides JAXA and USEF, there were people there from Kyoto (Iwao
Matsuoka, studying economic issues: concluded GEO is the only option for
a commercial system, and Shinohara doing some magnetron testing), Astro
Research Corp. (Hiroshi Yoshida, also offering an economic study that
suggested Japan could supply China with power from SSPS, generating
millions of jobs and trillions of yen in economic benefits), Kobe
University (Nobuyuki Kaya's group which is working on a near-term
suborbital demo/robotic challenge, and Masashi Iwashita, on a "sandwich
SPS" configuration they've been actually testing on the ground), the
Institute for Laser Technology (S. Uchida, laser-based SSPS) and at
least a handful of people from Mitsubishi, which seems to be involved in
all the projects at some level (Tomohisa Kimura spoke on antenna design,
Masatoshi Tominaga spoke on tests of wireless phase synchronization
(tested with bluetooth)).

Patrick Collins, who's been a long-time space solar power advocate, has
been in Japan for a while (working with the Kobe people mostly I think)
and spoke about the SPS-2000 equatorial LEO demonstrator they've been
trying to get funded for a while.

There were some real innovations shown at the meeting - I was
particularly impressed with a formation flying concept to tackle the
geometry problems (pointing an antenna at Earth while keeping the solar
cells facing the sun), developed by Noboru Takeichi at JAXA.

So, no, I didn't hear anything about a Mitsubishi project flying in
2005; the only thing that might be going up this year that I know of is
Kaya's suborbital project.

Arthur Smith