NASA Flies First Laser-powered Aircraft

unassimilatible writes "NASA has successfully tested a small-scale aircraft that flies solely by means of propulsive power delivered by an invisible, ground-based laser. How far away can in-flight IP/LASER broadband be?"

Comments

We did this in Canada 15 years ago...

[Recoil_42]

or something like it:

It used microwaves instead of "invisible lasers" (IR? i havent RTFA yet) but same end result, no?

Re:Life Imitating Art?

[orthogonal]

building humungous lasers in their asteroid belt and planet surface, and using them to propel a light sail armed interstellar craft between stars.

IANAP (I am not a physicist), but isn't using light pressure in a vacuum to drive a light sail entirely different from an aircraft with "specially designed photovoltaic cells carried onboard to power the plane's propeller"?

It's like (poor analogy alert) saying that a gasoline powered car and a squeeze-jet that squirts out liquid gasoline to propel itself through the water are using "the same" propulsive technology.

BTW, light sails were proposed by real physicists long before Niven and Pournelle wrote the excellent Mote in God's Eye.

Re:Not a laser..

[YouHaveSnail]

When was the last time you saw an invisible laser.. lasers are in the visible light spectrum

I'm not a physicist, but I've seen lots of inivisble lasers (okay, not the beam itself, but you know...). Lasers in both the infrared and ultraviolet regions are commonplace. Google for "infrared laser" or "ultraviolet laser" and you'll find many, many examples of each.

I suppose you could make some sort of argument that the L in LASER if for "light," and that IR and UV somehow aren't light because we can't see them. But insects and perhaps some animals can see in those regions, so it'd be a difficult position to defend. Both IR and UV are called "light" in general use. Additionally, there's no significant physical difference between a visible light laser and a UV or IR laser. And scientists now use the term "laser" even where most people would agree that the electromagnetic energy in question falls outside the part of the spectrum that we tend to think of as "light," e.g. x-ray lasers and microwave lasers.

A Few Comments

[ChuckDivine]

I first read about this sort of thing back in the 1970s. Proposals back then focused on constructing huge satellites (think 5 miles by 5 miles or 10 KM by 10 KM) in geosynchronous orbit. Energy would be beamed to earth via microwaves or lasers.

Planes could be powered via laser pointed at various reception devices (photovoltaic, steam generators, etc.).

Clouds would not be a major problem. Just pick a frequency that penetrated the clouds fairly easily. Or, in the case of airplanes, fly above the clouds.

For lots more information, just Google "Space Solar Power".