Guests: John Bucknell, Bill Gowan; Topics: Updates for John's company Virtus Solis, an overview of space based solar power, John's business plan, timelines, demos, making it to orbit, in space manufacturing and partnerships. Capital needs and acquisition for Virtus Solis were also discussed.
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We welcomed both John Bucknell and Bill Gowan to the show for Virtus Solis and SSP industry news and updates. First, I apologize for the lack of clarity at times with John's audio. He was using a cellphone plus headset which at times made for less than clear audio. That said, this was an important discussion because as you will hear later in the program when John was asked about direct commercial competition, others are working in the background, but Virtus Solis is now far ahead of the pack in the effort to create a commercial (meaning profit making) company transmitting solar power back to Earth for terrestrial power needs. Virtus Solis is both a pioneer and a true risk taker, doing so with intelligent business planning and engineering.
We started the discussion talking about commercially viable SSP. John talked about the basics of his business, what the lower cost space access has meant to his company, his plan for moving forward, and the recent power beaming demonstration that Virtus Solis did. This demo took place across an indoor practice football field for the Indianapolis Colts and beamed power over 100 meters.
I asked how an indoor demo could be comparable to free space transmission. John described how the size of the aperture relates to the far field distance and also noted that an indoor demo is a more difficult environment because of potentially interfering element along the beam, but the beam was very tight and not significantly affected by the astroturf and metal building. John mentioned that Virtus Solis already has its FCC license to operate at the 10GHz frequency required.
Bill, who attended the test, talked about the scaling up of the gear and technology, the antennas and rectennas, beam steering and more. John described the transmitter with its 6,400 small antennas plus the receiver which featured 2,000 rectennas. In commercial operation there will be billions of these antennas being controlled as a single phased array antenna. John said that attendees stood in the power beam and used their cell phones and that a drone was successfully flown through the beam. They also demonstrated beam steering between two targets for the first time.
Our first email question was from Todd wanting to know about his timeline for commercial space operations. In addition, he inquired about possible industry regulation given what we know happened to the Titanic diving min-sub Titan. John did not see Titan having an impact given that there was already regulations in his and other space industries. At this point John spent a few minutes taking us through the various government regulatory agencies and what they do and how they do it regarding what he is doing and wants to do re SSP. He briefly mentioned the need for regulations with developing space markets needing space traffic management. As for timelines, he said three years to get to orbit, probably from a West Texas location. He talked about the location, the need for specific ground stations plus a few other reasons. Don't miss all of what John had to say in his response to Todd's questions.
Bill focused our attention on the videos of what John has done and wants to do which are posted on the Virtus Solis website, www.virtussolis.space. There was mention of other noted SSP players such as John Mankins along with various international teams. This discussion of teams and academic projects prompted Ben from Tucson to send in a note asking John about his commercial competition, if any. As mentioned earlier in this summary, John said that at this time his company had no true commercial competition.
A great question came in from Sally wanting to know if she could be the end user for his energy or if she would have to buy it through her utility company, which she did not want to do. John spent time explaining why the beamed power would have to go to the utility company to be distributed through the grid. He was clear that it would not be possible to sell or distribute the power to an individual end user. His explanation of why that was so was very clear. If you have any comments or this, post them on our blog as we would like to hear from you.
Fremont John called and then after his call, he posted some of his relevant discussion points on our blog for this show. Fremont John brought up a recent MOU with Orbital Composites about 3D space manufacturing and more. He wanted to know the Virtus Solis role in this arena. John had much to say about it plus additional MOUs with other businesses, agencies and space players. He also said his company had received multiple financial awards from the UK and others. He mentioned participating in venture capital accelerators to help polish his plan for making presentations for capital to the V.C. industry. The lengthy call ended with a commentary on this pioneering use of robotics.
Fremont's mention of robotics led Paul from Chicago to send in a note asking about John's use of AI, if at all. John talked extensively about robotics, machine learning and AI as one unit. Don't miss what he had to say as he has been working with machine learning and these components throughout most of his engineering career. He concluded his remarks by saying ChatGPT was not that good and made lots of errors.
Bill brought up more on the subject of the need to go through a utility to access SSP. He mentioned the location of users, the need for lots of rectennas and their size, land usage plus much more. Don't miss what he had to say on the topic of the end user. Bill also brought up Starship and wanted John to share his thoughts on the first flight given he used to work at SpaceX. John had some very interesting things to say but you will have to listen to the program to hear them.
In conclusion, we talked about SSP being a big step and a big deal for the U.S! John offered a few salient concluding comments which you will want to hear.
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