Aetherflux founder Baiju Bhatt

The rapid decline in price for solar power has fueled a revolution in renewable energy, but it has a terrestrial cost. The average solar farm is around 40 acres in size, helping reduce carbon emissions but taking up green space. But there is a potential solution to this problem: build the solar panels in space, then beam the power back to Earth. It’s a sci-fi vision that Baiju Bhatt, the billionaire cofounder of fintech company Robinhood, wants to turn into a reality with his new company, Aetherflux, which aims to build a constellation of power-generating satellites and receiving stations.

“This goal of having infrastructure in space that’s truly resilient to conditions on the ground is really appealing,” Bhatt told Forbes. “It’s the kind of direction that we’ve already seen be hugely important with Starlink,” he added, referring to SpaceX’s constellation of satellites that have provided internet on the ground in places with little infrastructure, in conflict areas like Ukraine and during natural disasters.

Aetherflux isn’t the only company working on space-based solar power, an idea that NASA and other government agencies began exploring in the 1970s that ultimately never went anywhere. But now, the field is “experiencing a bit of a renaissance,” analyst Chris Quilty told Forbes by email. He said the shift has been driven by the need for clean energy, as well as the lower launch costs enabled by SpaceX.

For example, Michigan-based Virtus Solis and U.K-based Space........

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