OPPORTUNITIES FOR SUPERCONDUCTIVITY IN FUTURE SPACE EXPLORATION PROGRAMS - (A HYDROGEN ECONOMY FOR THE 21ST-CENTURY)

Since the discovery of the 90K materials about five years ago the prog ress in development of thin film superconducting materials for microwa ve applications has progressed rapidly. At this point high temperature superconducting (HTS) films are already good enough for most space mi crowave applications. And a large community of technology developers a re participating in insertion of this technology largely under the lea dership of NRL's HTSSE program. A review of this area is contained in a companion paper by Leonard et. al. The progress in developing bulk s uperconductor technology, which is the basis of most large scale appli cations of HTS, has been steady but has not led to the perception that HTS materials are anywhere near ready for these applications. in the Space Exploration Initiative and generally in the long term we feel th at the large payoff will be in the large scale applications of HTS not in thin film microwave applications. Interesting opportunities exist, for large scale bulk and digital applications of superconductivity in space, if one considers the possibilities for liquid hydrogen cooled superconducting systems operating near 20K.