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. 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.
"Once Starship is fully reusable, that will drive down the cost," said Bucknell."SpaceX has recently flown a Falcon 9 booster for the 20th time and they are recertifying for 40 launches. Conceivably, Starship could do hundreds of launches. But we are basing our assumptions on a 15-times use.
Virtus Solis wants to build giant photovoltaic arrays up to 0.6 miles across that would be assembled in orbit by robots from 5.3-foot wide modules. Hundreds of such modules would be delivered by a single Starship into the Molniya orbit, a highly elliptical orbit with the closest point about 500 miles above Earth and the farthest at 22,000 miles .
A still from a Victus Solis promotional video showing an in-space manufacturing spacecraft maneuvering a solar power element into place in a large array.for space-based solar power. Current systems have efficiencies of around 5 percent but for practical use, efficiencies of around 20 percent will be needed.