Mirror, mirror on the wall, what will concentrate solar energy best of all? In the 1960s @NASAglenn was working to develop systems that provide electrical power in space. One project was a Brayton cycle engine that used a large mirror to collect the sun's rays. Info in ALT text. #NASAhistory
This concept continued development up to the late 90s, Space Station Freedom and Mir-2 (and early ISS concepts) were all intended to have solar-dynamic power production in addition to photovoltaics. Rocketdyne even built a test system. But ultimately PV got a lot better, meanwhile ISS became less ambitious, and solar-dynamic turned out harder than expected, so it was dropped early in ISS dev (Russia's Science Power Platform for ISS was the last major proposal using it)
Mack Crawford
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