| ABOVE) Large taxiport. Gallium Arsenide solar panels generate 12 MWe, but only half the time when the taxiport is on the dayside. Power during passage thru Earth's shadow comes from fuel cells. That's enough to power over 4,000 average homes. Lots of electricity is needed to light and cool the station and run the LSS. Also, power is used to reliquefy boil-off from monopropellant tanks and run ion drives or electrodynamic tethers that overcome the slight atmospheric drag at 600 kilometers altitude. A similar taxiport at L2 uses ion drives,mag and solar sails to stay on station, since L2 is a bit unstable. Large main dish tracks one of three large relay stations in GEO that links with other GEO relays, ground stations, L1 and L2 stations, and space craft in Earth orbit and in Earth-Moon space. Needless to say, the GEO relay stations have some massive antenna farms to keep track of all these other stations and ships in space. |