Beamed
Energy Propulsion (BEP) is far more than a dream or idea: It is a powerful
enabling technology that will radically transform the future of air and space
transportation. It is physics, not imagination.
BEP
permits us to build and fly hyper-energetic vehicles driven by remote sources
of laser, microwave, and mm-wave power. Such vehicles provide unique
performance that would be impossible to achieve with traditional,
combustion-based engines. Vehicles driven by BEP will be "greener," safer, smaller,
lighter, faster, and far more efficient than any currently existing means of flight transport.
Beamed
Energy Propulsion, detailed in our book "The Lightcraft Flight Handbook:
LTI-20," is inherently a clean technology. It uses electricity, which can be
produced in an eco-friendly manner. It doesn't matter whether the electricity
comes from Earth-based or space-based solar, wind, fission, fusion, hydroelectric
(or other), so we can choose how to produce it--and we can choose from the
start to produce it in an ecologically responsible way. We see here the
emergence of nothing less than a sustainable energy infrastructure, one that
permits us to relegate our crude oil to use as a chemical feedstock, a resource
far too precious to burn.
Throughout
the history of human transportation, two things have acted as the practical
constraints on how fast, far, and high we can go: the power density of our engines and the energy density of our fuels. And
what if we leave the "fuel" behind altogether – and exploit beamed energy
propulsion instead? What if we could have the total output of an aircraft's or
spaceship's powerplant devoted to lifting the payload and structural shell that
supports the engines and payload?
Such
a system would represent the next major breakthrough in aerospace propulsion,
first enabling affordable access to space for launching constellations of
nanosatellites, and finally transform humans from Earthlings into
space-farers. We could not only lift 100 times as much payload with a given
amount of energy—we could do so with cheap electric energy. By leaving the
fuel behind, we also can make spaceflight much safer.
Cheap
access to space is nothing short of revolutionary. Just as internal combustion,
electricity, telephones, computers, the internet, and aviation have
dramatically changed our lives, so will our lives be changed again by our
gaining cheap access to nearby space. We will tap the vast energy resources of
the sun and material resources of the nearby asteroids while expanding human
civilization into this unbounded new environment. We will enter a new era for
humanity, a new Age of Sustainable Flight Mobility.
Is beamed
energy propulsion some futuristic pipe dream? Interestingly, laser-powered
lightcraft have already flown in miniature form. In a series of experiments
nearly a decade ago, saucer-sized lightcraft were successfully launched using a
military laser (one non-optimized for propulsion) at White Sands Missile Range,
New Mexico to 71 meters altitude. That altitude record still stands. In one
generation, the science and technology needed to build and fly full-size
Lightcraft has been developed to maturity, ripe for commercialization. All
that's needed now is to actually build them. The problem has evolved from a
scientific one to an engineering one—simply a matter of will.
The
sky is no longer the limit.
Leik
N. Myrabo and John S. Lewis are the authors of "The
Lightcraft Flight Handbook: LTI-20." This account of their book, available here, was written for SPACE.com.
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