Power Beaming For UAVs and Space Elevators 137
An anonymous reader writes "The idea of power beaming — using lasers or microwaves to transmit usable energy over great distances — has been around for decades. But recent advances in cheaper, more energy-efficient diode lasers have made power beaming commercially viable. LaserMotive, based in Kent, WA, is best known for winning the Level 1 prize of the NASA Power Beaming Challenge at the Space Elevator Games last November. In a new interview with Xconomy, LaserMotive co-founder Tom Nugent, who previously worked on the 'photonic fence' mosquito-zapping project at Intellectual Ventures, talks about gearing up for Level 2 of the NASA competition, slated for later this year. What's more, LaserMotive is trying to build a real business around beaming power to unmanned aerial vehicles, remote sensors and military bases, and other locations where it's impractical to run a wire, change batteries, or truck in fuel. The ultimate goal is to beam large amounts of solar power to Earth."
Re:Sounds cool (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't think they're really being that marginalized. The Constellation program (which I assuming is the source of most of the marginalization talk) wasn't making effective use of money and wasn't delivering much. But with no plans to replace it (at least that I've heard of) manned space travel definitely seems to be being put on the back burner.
Beyond that though, holding competitions like this is a great use of their budget. The rewards they give are relatively small compared to what it would take to develop the technology in house, and it gets companies that are flirting with the idea of developing space-related tech to produce when they might otherwise not, because the monetary reward lowers the financial risk of developing it.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Beaming power down from space? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Beaming power down from space? (Score:3, Interesting)
> Unless it was sent whipping around the earth by some external force, it would simply fall down.
No it wouldn't just fall down.
When a figure skater pulls his/her arms in, the figure skater spins faster. Why?
Because everything wants to keep moving at the same speed, and the stuff further from the center is moving faster than the stuff nearer.
So when the bits of the elevator are pulled in, they will want to continue moving too, and not just fall down.
The closer those bits are to the ground, the smaller the speed differences are, and the thicker the atmosphere is, etc, so what happens depends on where the breaks are.
Re:Beaming power down from space? (Score:3, Interesting)
Earth has an atmosphere much ticker than Mars. A space elevator falling would create a marvelous strip of fire across the sky but not much would be left of it to hit the ground.
Also, a space elevator would probably have the density and thickness of cardboard. A lot stronger to tear apart mind you but the parts not high enough to burn up would not fall straight down like a rock. So they'd gently float down onto the uninhabited ocean that surrounds the space elevator. Same for any other pieces that survive reentry.
So in the end it'd do no real damage from actually falling down. Some of the crawlers attached to it might leave unpleasant carters but probably not much damage either.
Re:Sounds cool (Score:5, Interesting)
From:
http://www.nasa.gov/pdf/428439main_Space_technology.pdf [nasa.gov]
"The return on investment with prizes is exceptionally high as NASA expends no funds unless the
accomplishment is demonstrated."
Am I the only one thinking that perhaps they should structure more government contracts like this?
With a focus on "expends no funds unless the accomplishment is demonstrated".
Which I would have thought should be a requirement for all government contracts but sadly is not.
It increases the risk to the companies involved but that just means you need to make the winnings pot a decent size.
Stop fucking around with these tiny little prizes of 1 or 2 million dollars and offer pots that would make a venture capitalist salivate( like 500 million dollars for the bellow)
"put at least one human being on the moon and bring him back to earth safely and collect *list of samples* and place *list of scientific equipment* on the lunar surface"
For comparison:
the space shuttle: 115 missions (as of 6 August 2006) - total cost $150 billion
at the moment prize pots seem to always be trivial quantities of money compared to the rest of the budget.
Late ? (Score:2, Interesting)