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Beaming into Space

Posted by michael on from the do-not-look-into-beam-with-remaining-eye dept.

HobbySpacer writes "At this week's 1st Int. Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion in Huntsville a wide range of laser and microwave propulsion schemes are being presented. The big news so far is the announcement by Gregory Benford of plans for a test of microwave propulsion with the Cosmos Sail, due to fly early next year. The possibilities of using lasers to deflect incoming asteroids & comets are also under discussion."

1 of 124 comments (clear)

  1. Re:A simple proposal by descentr · · Score: 4, Informative

    Well there's a slight problem with the space elevator idea. That requires you to have a large mass at the end of the cable for a counterbalance, like an asteroid. So using a space station attached to a a space elevator to build a ship capable of bringing an asteroid back to balance the elevator is kind of a chicken and the egg problem =)

    More info here:
    http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast 07sep_1 .htm