LONDON — SpaceX’s Starship will be a game changer for space-based solar power generation and will make orbiting power plants not only affordable, but cheaper than many other methods of generating electricity on Earth, according to Michigan-based start-up Virtus Solis.
Virtus Solis, founded by former SpaceX rocket engineer John Bucknell, introduced their solar power beaming concept at the International Conference on Energy from Space held in London on Wednesday, April 17.
“For space-based solar power to work, you need to have heavy-lift launch, you need to have wireless power transfer and you need to have the economics,” Bucknell said at the conference. “Once you have low-cost access to space, that’s one less miracle that you need to have solved.”
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The cost of launching …