Leik Myrabo has two hats today in his presentation. Leik is a strong believer in beamed energy for launch to space. Initial concept was introduced in 1977. Several groups around the world are investigating how to implement. The price for energy has dropped over the last couple decades.
Today he wants to share his vision how to move goods and people around the planet in environmentally friendly ways. Most people are looking into ground based beamed power. Leik thinks long term it is best to beam power from orbit.
LightCraft, a term Leik invented, a new breed of ultr-energetic flight vehicle powered by an external source of laser of microwave radiation beamed from a remote power station - i.e. an energy beaming infrastrutor.
Leik is finishing up a book called Lightcraft Flight Handbook LTI-20: Hypersonic Flight Transport for an Era Beyond Oil. He believes the price of oil will sky rocket. A world wide LightCraft infrastructure would allow transportation without the use of oil.
He talked about beam powered space flight also in 2007 and 2008.
Now he started to talk about a little more immediate items. He compared chemical rockets with beamed power. Beamed power is cheaper, when have a lot of launches. He has been working with the military.
They have had some flights. The beam energy raises the air to 30,000 degrees! It started to affect the metal. They were able to use an existing twenty million dollar laser at White Sands. It wasn't exactly what they wanted, but they learned a lot.
Leik is working on a Beamed Research Collaboration with Brazil and the United states. The Air Force wants to be able to launch nano-satellites from anywhere on the planet, with affordable systems.
The full agenda
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Technorati tags: space access
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