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NASA Looking To Power Spacecraft With Lasers
msmoriarty writes "NASA has decided to develop methods for using lasers and/or microwave energy to 'provide external power on demand for aerospace vehicles' as part of its 'Game-Changing' technology development program. According to the announcement, 'The project will attempt to develop a low-cost, modular power beaming capability and explore multiple technologies to function as receiving elements of the beamed power. This combination of technologies could be applied to space propulsion, performance and endurance of unpiloted aerial vehicles or ground-to-ground power beaming applications. Development of such capabilities fulfills NASA's strategic goal of developing high payoff technology and enabling missions otherwise unachievable with today's technology."
next... sharks with frickin lasers!
Wow, that's great. It's just a shame that NASA can't get humans into space.
Oh, wait . . . scratch that. It should read, "It's just a shame that Congress isn't capable of letting NASA get humans into space."
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
If it does work, efficiently and at long range, we can finally get started on sending solar collectors up into space for space based solar power. Which'll go a damned long way towards moving us along the way to a type I civilization.
And, if we happen to get excess power, maybe we can funnel that off into building a mass driver so we can get back up to space cheaply and efficiently instead of this irritating rocket based technology.
GET ON IT NASA! Work on REAL advances instead of listening to people harping on about sending people into space in order to do...what, exactly? Make people on the ground feel good about themselves? (If they advance their robots enough, a robot will be able to do experiments just as well as a human with proper human supervision)
If the laser propulsion tech that they are talking about is focusing light to create plasma of the surrounding air, then would this not create enormous amounts of ozone as a by-product?
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Ion engines have been around for decades now and NASA still celebrates their use as a demonstration of how "high tech" NASA is.
Most satellites and space probes still use extremely inefficient fuels even for large, energy intensive maneuvers - like going from Geostationary Transition Orbit(GTO) to the geostationary orbit (GSO) - mandating that they consist mostly of fuel for those maneuvers and having their life-time limited to however long it takes to deplete the fuel.
Spaceflight is one of the most conservative and unchanging industries out there. There are dozens of game changers that didn't change the game. And using extremely expensive ground installations that will provide only part-time power to a satellite - doing worse than what cheap solar panels can do much better anyway - is a particularly inauspicious candidate to actually do change anything at all.
In short: NASA, do us all a favor and shut up!
And when they're not powering spacecraft, the lasers are loaned out to the department of "defense", for "powering" foreign satellites. It's totally coincidental that tracking a LEO object for the purpose of hitting it with a laser beam is "dual use" technology.
Release mentions propulsion. Photonic Laser Thrusters are probably the best way to accelerate a deep space probe if we ever want to see one reach a nearby star in our lifetimes.
Atmospheric lightcraft on the other hand, seem to be doing rather poorly -- so far they've only managed to raise a hat-sized prototype about a hundred meters above the ground.
Actually one interesting spin-off from this technology could be to discover a viable technology to harvest energy from close to the sun and transport it to the earth. I'm sure this will be something necessary in the next 100-200 years, but alas it seems noone considers planning waaaay ahead of time.
getting stuff into orbit would be a whole lot easier if you aim a array of lasers at a heat exchanger on the launch vehicle, and use it to heat up hydrogen for thrust. it would make easily reusable single stage launch vehicles feasible.
Oh c'mon, NASA couldn't plan ahead for 10 years when it became clear that the Shuttle was history. It couldn't plan ahead and see that constellation was a sham. It couldn't plan ahead a see that Ares I wouldn't work.
... as a Shuttle flying nowhere, coming back from nowhere and doing nothing in particular.
It couldn't plan ahead and see that the Space Shuttle - as part of a huge plan to build a space station and spaceships in orbit - was a failure from the start, when budgets for those other projects had not been provided and the Shuttle was the *only* thing that was kept
Arf.
I'm sure it's only a question of time before the suitable sharks are genetically engineered (couldn't resist). Seriously though, the first step is to establish laser communication with mars; after that start to worry about building a laser beam of gigantic energy and not having it wipe out civilization as we know it if it's misaligned by a micrometer.
NASA has had a Centennial Challenge open in power beaming for some years now. From :
This challenge is a practical demonstration of wireless power transmission. Practical systems employing power beaming would have a wide range of applications from lunar rovers and space propulsion systems to airships above the Earth. Another future application of power beaming would be the space elevator concept.
In 2009 the competitors drove their laser-powered devices up a cable one kilometer high, suspended from a helicopter, and LaserMotive LLC was awarded $900,000.
It turns out that it is really tough and actually somewhat dangerous to have a helicopter dangle a 1 km string perfectly vertical. This also "doesn't scale" (i.e., there is no way a helicopter is going to dangle a 5 km string for a longer test), and future competitions will be done horizontally, on the ground. (This also fits in with the idea of power beaming to rovers, say one exploring the always dark Shackleton Crater at the Lunar South pole, which is frankly a more realistic near-term prospect than a terrestrial space elevator.)
I believe there is still $ 2 million (USD) to be awarded, so slashdotters should get to it and go out there and take the Governments money.
A prof. at my alma mater has been trying to do this for 25 years: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leik_Myrabo
RETURN without GOSUB in line 1050
I have been writing one senator who sat on the Senate Arms Committee for the last 3 years suggesting that we do an X-Prize in America (or in the west) for 2 technologies. .5 to 5 km again at 25%, while the second is .5 Km at 50% efficiency. With a 5 km range, it enables a tank battalion to have electric weapons, with another tank in the rear that can provide lots more power (think a nuke reactor in a tank). In addition, it allows something like an Aircraft Carrier to provide power to other ships that would then have electric weapons. Again for civilian uses, the high efficiency not only improves current equipment, but it will be picked up by Ag tractors, and other new equipment. The 5 km also allows trains to pick this up. With such an approach, it makes it cheap to provide electric power to a train. Maintenance is a huge costs in a train. Likewise, it can provider energy at an airport for electric planes esp. for take-offs. We speak of wanting electric planes, but carrying all your energy is expensive. But the truly expensive portion is getting to altitude. After that time, you cut way back on power. For beaming on a disaster area, 5 kms allows floating the balloon much higher and covering a great deal more area. .5 km, while only getting 30% efficiency at 200 miles, it is still major gains all over.
The first is energy storage. It must have the ability to last for millions of cycles, have the ability to take an extremely fast charge with extreme energy and power densities. Basically, this is almost certainly a better ultra-cap, however, you do not want to limit it just to ultra-caps. If somebody can figure out a new better device that fits the bill, then you want to support it. After all, it is possible (not likely) that a battery would do the trick.
The second IS beaming power. This was to be in steps. The first was to be 1/2 km at 25% efficiency. THat would allow setting up local power. In particular, you can set up a power station and beam it to multiple points without wires. Think of a FOB or any place that needs to be set p quickly, but disassemble quickly as well. From a Civilian POV, it can be used to provide power to earth movers, diggers, etc At 25%, it has the same efficiency of a diesel. It can also be used to float a small balloon over a disaster area and provide local power QUICKLY. In any disaster, providing energy quickly makes the difference of life or death for many ppl. In addition, something like this will be a great deal lighter than loads of generators AND fuel.
Then create 2 X-prize to jump this from
Obviously, we need iterative prizes to continue jumping up efficiencies as well as distance. If it was possible to get 90% efficiency at
So, good to see that NASA has more brains than my senator. But I guess that was a given.
I really like this approach. If we can get hydrogen to expand via the electric heat, than we can make great strides in space travel. Now, if we can just get CONgress to kill the SLS and devote that money to private space launches as well as advanced R&D like this, we could get America back on track. Sadly, our CONgress is ran by a bunch of MBA/lawyer types esp. the house that are far more interested in helping themselves, rather than our nation.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
In addition to The Mote in God's Eye, where aliens used enormous lasers to send a solar sail-based ship across interstellar distances, he described a laser-based system to launch small (VW Beetle-sized) manned capsules into orbit.
Back in 2000, a group of NASA engineers and scientists visited Tennessee Tech. I was a student at the time and went to a meeting with some of the developers of laser ablation technology. My Calculus professor (Andrej Gutek) invited the class to attend that private meeting. Something like half a dozen showed up. If it was viable, it should have made more progress by now, but there is a chance that it got starved for funding. This event was related to the same one that Robert Zubrin spoke at and did a book signing for "A Case for Mars".
Come on NASA, best you can come up with on solving power is copying a feature in Portal!?
What we really need is a nice, big laser in a nice, high orbit. It should use photovoltaic cells to charge and have the range and power to give a meaningful kick to any spacecraft between Earth and Jupiter.
It would be expensive to build, but if it was done properly, it could provide "free delta v" to a lot of suitably-equipped spacecraft for a very, very long time.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
It couldn't plan ahead and see that the Space Shuttle - as part of a huge plan to build a space station and spaceships in orbit - was a failure from the start,
It was not a failure from the start. Not only other projects got canceled and made teh shuttle less usefull also the shuttle itself and its missions got stripped down. In the original concepts e.g. it was planned that the huge fuel tanks of the shuttle would go up into orbit with the shuttle. There they would have been decoupled and moved with a small engine into a parking orbit.
And there they would be combined later to a space station.
If that had not been scratched we had now over 130 "tanks" orbiting earth ready to be assembled into space station(s) small crusing space vessels etc.
Also I for myself don't see the shuttle program as a complete failure, after all it gave us Hubble, and let us repair it etc.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Just curious, How are they going to attach sharks to the spacecraft to get the lasers to function?
Is there a more detailed explanation of the technologies?
It would be ridiculously expensive and dangerous, and it would tell us little that safer one-way robot missions cannot tell us for a fraction of the price.
Don't get me wrong, I am as excited as anyone about space exploration and colonization; but the point is, for now the technology just isn't mature enough.
Now, one could argue that sending people in space would be a good way to test our current technology and improve it; but the point is, most of the research and the testing that we _could_ do in space can be done just as well by unmanned missions, or by earth-based experiments.
What NASA needs is a remotely powered space tug that can refuel itself by dipping into the upper region of the atmosphere. The space tug could put satellites into geostationary orbit. Or launch interplanetry probes. It would use MHD drive for high ISP. It would be remotely powered by an high power laser.
Wouldn't aiming a laser at a small, moving target far away be useful for a laser canon?
Perhaps NASA should try sharks with laser beams? ;)
Am I the only one that caught on to the fact that "beaming energy" has enormous potential use as a weapon?
I realize that's not the intention, and honestly, I think it's pretty neat, but it's somewhat alarming that the potential abuses do not seem to have been considered.
Question everything
A defuse laser, or a directed beam ?
The basic concept of beamed propulsion has been around for a while in various forms (thermal vs electric vs momentum exchange)
These guys are working on the microwave version of an SSTO
http://www.escapedynamics.com/
and laser versions of that have been proposed earlier. Though they still haven't solved the initial launch/horizon firing issues well (ideally want some altitude before you start firing the beam on the SSTO).
In college we worked on a concept to use bimodal NTR reactors attached to Mars bound cargo spacecraft to supply power to a Mars base lander via simple microwave mesh rectenna wrapped around the lander body that popped out using compressed gas and memory metals, coupled to the orbital NTR reactor firing power via segmented phased array microwave transmitter that was previous wrapped around the now empty hydrogen tank used to propel the spacecraft to Mars, to cut out the mass of a mini-nuke on the lander to power an ISRU fuel plant. Unfortunately you need to keep the NTR in a fixed position in the sky, so that meant high orbit, so this wasn't all that viable for NTR's attached to manned spacecraft picking up capsules launched from the surface. Still, a pretty attractive concept and substantially increased surface cargo mass. But we got nitpicked over the TRL of a segmented phased array, the increased mass of the bimodal NTR reactor radiator in electric mode, and poor backup power options for the lander (which now could be remedied with thin film solar cells underlying the rectenna mesh). Though this concept could be done via laser as well now to with a solid state laser array on the NTR, and a tuned solar array, or even a simple Stirling engine with a black heat exchanger to receive the laser. A laser array also gives the option of splitting some of the output off to power rovers ranging away from the base lander.