Guest: Peter Sage. Topics: Space Solar Power (SSP), the business case for SSP. Peter Sage, a leading and well-known international entrepreneur and a Director and Principal of Space Energy was a guest for this show from Dubai. You can find out more about our guest and his company by visiting www.spaceenergy.com. Our almost two hour program was divided in two segments but because our discussion points and themes crossed over the segments, this review will not be broken down by segment. There was only one break leaving the last segment about 75 minutes in length. As we started the program, Mr. Sage put forth the case for SSP and its potential. He talked about his preliminary due diligence and the feedback received from many different sources which indicated that the technology was not the issue. Instead, closing the business case was the issue. Do not miss this discussion. As he discovered, the key economic factor, the key economic metric was the kilogram per kilowatt ratio which is impacted by launch costs. As you will hear, by going to Thin Film Photo Voltaics, they improve efficiency, lower mass, and increase deployment size, thus they effectively lower launch costs. We continued this discussion into the second segment because we asked Peter what to took to make a quality presentation before business people to obtain capital. I urge all listeners to pay careful attention to what Peter Sage had to say about this. Its instructive for us all. In addition, his focus on solid due diligence, the business and management team and the understanding that he is working an energy company that uses space rather than a space company is very important. Also note that Peter did not come to this as a space person or a true believer in SSP. Again, this is an important distinction. Terrestrial power issues were discussed, political policy and social engineering were discussed, as well as solid economics and market solutions. Timing for SSP deployment was a focus of this discussion and as you will hear, all important. In the context of timing, his response to listener questions was on the basis of buying down the risk and cost reduction versus market and early competitive advantage. At the end of this program, Peter asked a series of questions that you will hear along with my response, all of which lead one to a rational conclusion that SSP is an important part of our future energy mix, not the entire part as Peter Sage certainly says we need all tools of energy development to address the energy issues we as a global society are going to be facing in the future. In fact he references the excellent energy study done by Mike Snead who spoke about his study on The Space Show on Jan. 9, 2009. You can hear Mike's interview about his comprehensive energy study at http://archived.thespaceshow.com/shows/1086-BWB-2009-01-09.mp3. When visiting www.spaceenery.com, subscribe to their free newsletter. You can also hear Peter's TED presentation which is well worth your hearing, plus there are other important SSP technical and business presentations and materials on this website. If you have a comment or question for Peter Sage, you can use the contact page at http://www.spaceenergy.com/Terrestrial/contact or send your note to our guest per the address on this page. Please reference The Space Show in the subject line.
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The Space Show
