John Bucknell, CEO and Founder
Virtus Solis Technologies
Will present a talk titled:
The History of Energy, Us and the Future of the Future with special guest Space Based Solar Power
Abstract: The rise of humans into a technological civilization is a story of how we leveraged energy to achieve those things we could not do alone. Today the future is upon us, but unevenly distributed and to achieve universal prosperity and other great things we need the ability to leverage even more energy. This seminar will discuss how we use energy today and how we can progress up to a Kardashev Scale I Civilization which harvests all the energy arriving from nearby stars. Space Based Solar Power is one of the methods to harvest that energy, and a short description of how it works will be presented.
Date: September 24, 2021
Location: SC 160
Time: 11:00 am
Bio: John R. Bucknell is the CEO and Founder at Virtus Solis Technologies. John is a serial entrepreneur with 25 years industry experience in bringing energy conversion systems to market including four production engine families as well as nine years of aerospace engineering design including design of the Raptor rocket engine for SpaceX. He has held posts in Advanced Powertrain at both General Motors and FCA and was most recently Director of Propulsion and Electrical Engineering at Divergent Technologies where he led the development of the 1250bhp strong hybrid powertrain for the Czinger 21C. He holds 46 patents and has two technical publications in the fields of air breathing combined cycle rocket design (both nuclear and chemical-based), one in high thermal efficiency transport engines, one in synthetic fuel production through ocean thermal energy and a proposal describing co-production of electricity and synfuel with molten salt nuclear reactors.. John holds a Professional Engineer’s license from the State of Michigan and has domain expertise in combustion, emissions, space propulsion systems, economics, nuclear power, energy conversion systems and mass manufacturing – lately with additive manufacturing. John has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Cleveland State University and a MS in Systems Engineering from the University of Michigan.
