Investigating Super Efficient Laser Propulsion Leads to Serendipitous UV effects

wvanhuffel writes "In this article from spacedaily the authors may be on the road to creating the impulse engine....then again, maybe not. It's life imitating art again!" The article details the exploration of the use of lasers and more importantly a new effect when certain materials (in this case lead) are struck by the laser, apparantly a predictable secondary explosion 50 millionths of a second after the target is struck, emitting UV light.

Comments

Impulse Engine it's not

[Rick the Red]

This is a reaction engine. Lead may be the reactant, and lasers may be the energy source, but the propulsion is still caused by tossing mass away from the direction you wish to move.

A true impulse engine does not lose mass, just energy, and is still a fiction. That's not what these folks are working on.

A superior engine

[spike hay]

A better engine than this one is the VASIMR. It is a plasma engine that is under development. It ionizes hydrogen with microwaves an then accelerates them with magnetic fields. While it doen't provide thrust like a chemical rocket, it certainly has many, many times more thrust than a ion engine. It has some oomph to it. I really don't think that the ablative engine that this article was about would be good to launch vehicles into space. You would need a fscking huge laser to propel the ablative rocket into space. The cost of the giant laser would outweigh the cost savings of not using a huge amount of rocket fuel.
For cheap launches, you really need somthing like the x-42 scramjet spaceplane. That would cut costs of launching by a factor of 10 with no giant lasers.

VASIMR will get a specific impulse of 30,000 seconds compared to 500 seconds for the shuttle's engines. A specific impulse is the number of seconds 1 kg. of fuel could produce 1 kg. of thrust. The specific impulse of the VASIMR is 60 times better than the shuttle. That's even better than this ablative engine.
That would allow cheap interplanetary voyages anywhere in the solar system, using very little fuel. Using these engines, you could get to Saturn in less than a year. It would also allow slow intersteller trips of around 1% the speed of light.
Also, VASIMRs could be easily, cheaply, and quickly refueled for more missions.Interplanetary travel could become cheap. I bet each ship would cost around 5 billion dollars initialy. After that, it's cheap. After each trip, an X-42 could come and restock the ship with fuel and supplies. That would only cost around 50 million. We could send tens of thousands to colonize Mars.

BTW: On this article, it says the VASIMR gets 10,000 seconds. It can reach 30,000 with further development.
Read about the VASIMR here