
SpaceX Starship Could FINALLY Beam Solar Power To Earth!
SpaceX Starship Could FINALLY Beam Solar Power To Earth!
As per Michigan-based start-up Virtus Solis, SpaceX’s Starship is expected to revolutionize space-based solar power generation and render orbiting power plants not just affordable but also less expensive than numerous other Earthly ways of electricity generation. How will SpaceX make this happen? Let’s check it out!
Hey guys, welcome back to my channel. In today’s video, we are going to explore how SpaceX’s Starship could beam solar power to Earth. And so before we begin, make sure you subscribe to our channel and click the bell icon so you don’t miss any of our amazing videos.
In 1941, science fiction writer Isaac Asimov proposed the concept of space solar power in his short story “Reason.” However, in truth, it has long been written off as being too expensive and technically challenging to be economically feasible. But as the threat posed by climate change becomes more pressing and space economics shifts, governments globally are reevaluating space’s possibilities. To determine whether it is feasible to launch experiments into orbit by the end of the decade, scientists from China, the US, the UK, Japan, and Europe are looking into this.
During the International Conference on Energy from Space, which took place in London on Wednesday, April 17, Virtus Solis—founded by John Bucknell, a former rocket engineer at SpaceX—presented their concept.
“For space-based solar power to work, you need to have a heavy-lift launch, you need to have wireless power transfer and you need to have the economics,” Bucknell stated at the event. “Once you have low-cost access to space, that’s one less miracle that you need to have solved.”
With the development of reusable rockets, which SpaceX pioneered, the cost of sending satellites into orbit has drastically decreased recently. The present cost per kilogram of payload for the company is less than $3,000, but it is still too costly for space-based solar power generation, which will need massive circling arrays bigger than the International Space Station, the largest object in orbit today.
SpaceX claims that the cost of launching satellites into space will be as low as $10 per kilogram once Starship is fully operational. That estimate may be somewhat ambitious, but according to Bucknell, space-based solar power will become more affordable than nuclear power plants or gas and coal-fired power plants on Earth once the cost of launch into low Earth orbit drops below $200 per kilogram.
“Once Starship is fully reusable, that will drive down the cost,” Bucknell stated. “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.”
At less than $30 per megawatt-hour, Earth-based photovoltaic panels are currently the least expensive source of electricity. However, the sun doesn’t shine at night, and energy experts find it difficult to use alternative renewable sources to offset that daily loss. To date, in inclement weather or after dark, coal-fired, gas-fired, and nuclear power facilities have to be kept on standby in order to meet demand. However, for the world to reach its emission reduction targets, gas and coal must be phased out.
Furthermore, Bucknell noted that nuclear power is far more costly. “The cost of nuclear power is between $150 and $200 per megawatt hour,” Bucknell stated. “We think that our system could get down to around $30 per megawatt hour once at scale.”
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