Ascending to the Stars on a Beam of Light

Look at a typical rocket and you’ll see a typical bottom heavy cone with mountains of fuel at the bottom tracing near the tiny payload at the top. That inefficiency is the main reason why it mounts to about $10,000 per pound to get a satellite into the outer orbit. It is also why a radical group of researchers are investigating an extremely inventive alternative that could loft objects into space far more cheaply—using lasers instead of chemicals.

Recently closed work by aerospace engineer Franklin Mead Jr. of the Air Force Research Laboratory and physicist Eric Davis of the Institute for Advanced Studies at Austin, Texas, describes this “light craft propulsion.” Their technique aims a high-powered laser beam upward at a small, low-mass craft. Their brilliant theoretic idea to blast a beam of light upwards at a lightweight, aerodynamic craft and, mathematically possible, during take-off, the laser causes air at the base of the craft to explode into a jet of hot plasma, generating thrust. Beyond the reach of our little pale blue dot's atmosphere, the laser continues to aim at the craft’s underbelly, heating a propellant material that lines its bottom. Engineer Mead has experimented with small-scale models to fine tune the directional basis and momentum continuum of light propulsion, and physicist Davis has investigated the efficiency of the laser. The two researchers highly regard that their design could get satellites into low Earth orbit for around $1,400 per pound. “Not carrying the whole energy source on board reduces the cost to a fraction of what we’re used to paying,” Davis says.

Although no craft at all has yet made it into space, one prototype—designed by Leik Myrabo, an engineering physicist at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute—successfully flew 233 feet into the air under laser power. Physicist Myrabo says he could increase the height existentially by up-winding to a wider and more powerful beam of light. But reaching orbit will require huge megawatt lasers; so far, the best commercial lasers used in experiments have less than 10% of that power. Military lasers might have the might, but they are difficult to access for civilian acquirement in research. Myrabo is now joining up with the Brazilian Air Force on efforts to boost laser power in tests at the Institute for Advanced Studies in São José dos Campos, Brazil.

This article is very interesting to me because (1) I have an avid interest in astrophysics and space science (2) this is a huge technological leap for space exploration in many ways including; cost factors, distance, and astronomical advancements, and (3) the cheaper the cost for space travel, theoretically, the more we can travel into space. I think that space discovery is very important to us -as humans- for a larger understanding of why we exist. For isn’t this the ultimate question: “Why are we here?” To the detriment of the human race we have been bogged down for two millennia by the super-natural consensus that something more than we can imagine created us. Despite the fact that this mode of thinking is contradictory; it has no evidence what so ever, none. This is the age of science, reason and technology. These three tried and tested modes of thinking in the natural world are the way forward and with these we are ever closer to that ultimate answer. Or will we ever know?