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	Beam-powered propulsion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Beam-powered propulsion is a class of spacecraft propulsion mechanisms that use energy beamed to the spacecraft from a remote power plant.
		Ablative Laser Propulsion is a form of laser propulsion that uses a laser to create a plasma plume from a metal propellant, thus producing thrust.
		Myrabo's "lightcraft" design is a reflective funnel-shaped craft that channels heat from the laser, towards the center, using a reflective parabolic surface causing the laser to literally explode the air underneath it, generating lift.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Beam-powered_propulsion (721 words)

	Unconventional Spacecraft Propulsion (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Laser propulsion concepts have been described for several decades.
		The laser beam is used to heat a propellant with the energetic expansion driving the craft.
		In space (vacuum) the dimpled plate is jettisoned to expose a block of solid propellant which is ablated by the laser beam to produce thrust.
	www-phys.llnl.gov /clementine/ATP/Laser.html (137 words)

	laser propulsion
		Methods of propelling spacecraft using the energy of laser beams, all of which remain conceptual or in the early stages of experimentation.
		Off-board laser propulsion is part of a larger class of propulsive methods known as beamed-energy propulsion.
		Laser lightsails would be interplanetary or interstellar spacecraft powered by one or more extremely powerful, orbiting lasers.
	www.daviddarling.info /encyclopedia/L/laserprop.html (432 words)

	Space Transfer (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Lasers to be considered must operate in the wavelength range centered around the visible spectrum in which the atmosphere is nearly transparent.
		We compared three systems; laser power alone; solar power alone; and the case where laser power is used when the spacecraft is in range of a laser station, and solar power is used when the spacecraft is not in view but is in sunlight.
		The propulsion system was assumed to use an advanced electrodeless pulsed inductive thruster [24] with a specific impulse of 5000 seconds and efficiency of 50%, which has been demonstrated (at the single-pulse level) in laboratory experiments [24].
	powerweb.grc.nasa.gov /pvsee/publications/lasers/AIAA92_3213.html (5461 words)

	Ablative laser propulsion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		Ablative Laser Propulsion or ALP is a form of beam-powered propulsion in which an external pulsed laser is used to burn off a plasma plume from a solid metal propellant, thus producing thrust.
		The measured specific impulse of small ALP setups is very high at about 5000 s (49 kN·s/kg), and unlike the lightcraft developed by Leik Myrabo which uses air as the propellant, ALP can be used in space.
		ALP is being developed by Professor Andrew Pakhomov at the University of Alabama in Huntsville of the UAH Laser Propulsion Group.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Ablative_laser_propulsion (131 words)

	Laser Propulsion (462)
		Should a megawatt laser become available, LTI is planning to send a small satellite—weighing less than a kilogram—into orbit via laser propulsion by 2005.
		Laser propulsion would be a cheap way of placing these “microsatellites” in orbit.
		LTI predicts that laser propulsion, once in widespread commercial use, could eventually reduce launch costs by as much as a factor of a 1000.
	www.mdatechnology.net /techsearch.asp?articleid=462 (740 words)

	Dark Government, laser propulsion
		The laser energy strikes a parabolic condensing reflector mounted on the bottom of the Lightcraft.
		Struck by laser pulses, the propellant detonates and thrusts the Lightcraft upward.
		Mead said another possible goal for the upcoming flights is routing the laser beam on the ground from one set of optical gear to another while the Lightcraft is in flight.
	www.darkgovernment.com /lasercraft.html (998 words)

	SPACE.com -- SPACE.com Exclusive: JPL Accomplishes Laser Sail First
		The team was able to use the laser beam to deflect the sail and pendulum upward, much the way that a breeze would push a windsock hanging at the bottom of a the same swinging arm.
		The next step for the laser sail project is to test the sail materials under a wider regime of laser intensities, and to continue to develop the carbon materials, Harris said.
		A sail set in the glare of a laser beam would has tendency to flip out of the beam, just as a paper plate would be tossed out of a high-speed jet of water.
	www.space.com /news/lasersail_000301.html (1447 words)

	Alternate View Column AV-21
		Laser powered launching to orbit is an emerging space technology that may eventually provide a techno-fix for the large expense of getting payloads into orbit, a way around the high cost of Shuttle payloads.
		The trick in the laser powered launching scheme is to separate the two functions of the fuel: let a ground-based laser supply the propulsion energy, far more energy per fuel mass than chemical burning could supply, while a safe chemically inert "fuel block" supplies the reaction mass.
		But for laser powered launching the shielding effect of the plasma is a benefit because it insures that the laser energy is absorbed by the vaporized fuel rather than the payload or the solid fuel block.
	www.npl.washington.edu /AV/altvw21.html (1969 words)

	Laser Propulsion Group -- Research (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		In ALP, the craft is driven by high-energy, short-width (100 ps and less) laser pulses, focused on a solid propellant.
		Under such irradiation conditions, the laser pulse is absorbed by propellant before the dense plasma is formed, i.e., light-plasma interaction is negligible and the direct ablation of solid propellant dominates other possible momentum transfer mechanisms.
		Laser ablation is a complex phenomena with a lot of interesting physics involved.
	pakhomov.uah.edu /Research.htm (367 words)

	Laser Propulsion Summary - Laser Propulsion Information
		An advanced laser propulsion system might use air as the reaction mass for the initial portion of the flight, when the rocket is still in the atmosphere.
		Laser propulsion systems require a high-power laser, a tracking system to follow the motion of the rocket, a mirror (or "beam director") to aim the laser at the rocket, and a lens or focusing mirror to focus the laser light onto the receiver.
		Laser propulsion can also continue to be used once the rocket is in space, to raise the vehicle to a higher orbit, or to boost it to a transfer orbit.
	www.bookrags.com /sciences/astronomy/laser-propulsion-spsc-04.html (644 words)

	Laser launch (Henry Spencer; Jordin Kare)
		In fact, the _main_ advantage of laser propulsion is probably not the increased performance (high specific impulse), but the ability to operate as a "pipeline", with very high throughput for a minimum of manpower.
		I'm _not_ working on laser propulsion actively right now precisely because there is neither a market sufficient to pay for a commercial system, nor a national need (for either a laser or a launcher) sufficient to get one built at government expense.
		Laser power beaming has been seriously proposed for both geostationary comsats (to avoid spending a lot of mass on batteries) and for night power at a lunar base (where the storage problem is greatly compounded by the very long nights).
	yarchive.net /space/exotic/laser_launch.html (11148 words)

	Yuri A. Rezunkov: Russian Research into Laser Propulsion (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		For the first time, the laser propulsion was theoretically examined by V.P. Korobeinikov in his paper published in 1973.
		The phenomena of a laser breakdown of air were used in the first laboratory experiments on laser propulsion created by the pulsed and repetitively pulsed CO2 lasers.
		As the example of the interpretation, the experimental data obtained by V.A. Danilyichev in 1983 on CO2 laser pulse interaction with the plasma generated closely by a target surface should be considered.
	www.batse.msfc.nasa.gov /colloquia/abstracts_spring03/rezunkov.html (353 words)

	[No title]
		As noted by Landis (1989), the lens and the laser source are both required to be positioned to within an accuracy of 3 meters to maintain a beam wander of less than the sail radius at a distance of 0.17 LY.
		However, as noted by Forward (1985/1989), as long as the laser maintains diffraction-limited coherence across the aperature, it is possible to focus the beam to a spot actually smaller than the magnified image of the laser aperture.
		The difficulty of using semiconductor diode lasers is that individual lasers diodes typically have a power of roughly 1 watt.
	www.aleph.se /Trans/Tech/Space/laser.txt (5604 words)

	Detective Work Underway On Freak Delayed Explosion
		Most of the time, when he, Dr. Don Gregory and their graduate students conduct laser propulsion experiments, they measure laser pulses and the reactions that the lasers cause in from a millionth or a few billionths of a second.
		Earlier experiments in laser propulsion used powerful laser pulses in the microsecond time range to heat air under a metal shroud to the point that it exploded like lightning, forming a plasma and a shock wave that pushed against the shroud.
		The first laser rocket systems might use powerful lasers mounted on the ground to give spacecraft a boost during launch, when a spacecraft has to fight through the thickest layer of the atmosphere and overcome inertia.
	unisci.com /stories/20021/0306023.htm (1149 words)

	One Wee Hop For A Laser 'craft' Might Also Be A Giant Leap
		The June 7 hop in a lab in UAH's Optics Building was the first successful demonstration of laser-powered rocket propulsion in a vacuum, according to Dr. Andrew Pakhomov, an associate professor of physics at UAH and a leader in the fledgling field of beamed energy propulsion.
		This laser "ablation" technology is also efficient, with each pound of material generating five to ten times as much thrust as a pound of chemical rocket fuel and oxidizer.
		Earlier experiments in laser propulsion used powerful laser pulses to heat air under a metal shroud to the point that it exploded like lightning, forming a plasma and a shock wave that pushed against the shroud.
	www.spacedaily.com /news/rocketscience-04zi.html (832 words)

	Some Novel Space Propulsion Systems
		Between the mighty powerplants of the laser sailors and the gigantic accelerators of the pellet stream riders lies an immense, largely unexplored, spaceflight regime [Bishop, 1997c].
		The nominal length of the "accelerator" is the distance between the deployment of the sails and their impact against the spacecraftís pusher plate.
		Kantrowitz, A., "Propulsion to Orbit by Ground-Based Lasers", (1972), Aeronautics and Astronautics, Vol 10, pp 74-76
	www.foresight.org /Conferences/MNT05/Papers/Bishop/index.html (4647 words)

	[No title] (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The laser was selected to emit at frequencies that are greatly absorbed by the lower atmosphere.
		The laser, at low power, would lock onto a retroreflector on the heat exchanger (large disk sitting on top of the aircraft, rather resembling the radar dish on an AWACS [sp?] plane, containing one or more laser powered engines).
		If laser lock was lost and could not be reestablished (for some reason) the aircraft still has landing fuel and quite a ways to glide.
	www.cs.cmu.edu /afs/cs.cmu.edu/usr/mnr/st/std074 (1700 words)

	Advanced Space Propulsion Study - BEAMED POWER PROPULSION
		In a beamed power propulsion system, the heavy parts of a rocket (propellant, energy source, and engine) are left on the ground or in orbit, while the payload and associated structure carry out the mission.
		A Laser Propulsion Workshop was held from 7-18 July 1986 at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California to investigate the feasibility of using some of the high power laser systems under development at LLNL for the SDI program as sources for testing laser propulsion concepts.
		The laser supplies the energy source to heat the propellant (water) to temperatures higher than could be reached using any chemical reaction.
	www.transorbital.net /Library/D001_S02.html (603 words)

	Andrew V. Pakhomov: Laser Propulsion: from Tsiolkovsky to UAH (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The original idea of laser propulsion was formulated before the time of lasers by K.E. Tsiolkovsky in 1924.
		The modern history of Laser Propulsion (LP) started in 1972, when Dr. Arthur Kantrowitz (Avco-Everett Labs) first popularized the idea of using ablation of matter under intense laser fields for space transportation.
		In this talk the physical principles of laser propulsion as well as currently existing and developing LP schemes and their applications will be briefly reviewed.
	www.batse.msfc.nasa.gov /colloquia/abstracts_spring04/andrew.html (346 words)

	Laser and Microwave Rockets (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		A laser erected on a mountain peak aims its beam toward a spacecraft and heats up propellant carried by the spacecraft.
		Unlike the laser beam, the microwaves are not absorbed by the clouds.
		The cost of generating microwaves is much lower than the cost of generating laser light of the same power.
	www.nas.nasa.gov /About/Education/SpaceSettlement/Nowicki/SPBI115.HTM (332 words)

	Myrabo, Leik N.
		As a result of this laser lightsail research, he was selected as a 'semifinalist for the 2001 Discover Magazine Awards for Technological Innovation (Aerospace Prize).
		Dr. Myrabo's experimental and theoretical studies are focused on innovative aeronautical, aerospace, and space flight propulsion concepts for the 21st Century and beyond.
		The primary research emphasis is on the application of beamed energy (e.g., laser, microwave, millimeter wave sources) and field propulsion engines to future airbreathing/ rocket shuttlecraft - developed for a variety of hypersonic, launch, and orbit-raising missions.
	www.rpi.edu /dept/mane/deptweb/faculty/member/myrabo.html (1047 words)

	Laser Power Beaming
		In particular, I proposed, at the Princeton Conference on Space Manufacturing in 89, that Earth-based lasers could be used to provide power to a lunar base over the 354-hour lunar night, using the same solar arrays that were used to provide solar power during the daytime.
		The use of an Earth-based laser to power an electric thruster for space propulsion was first proposed, as far as I know, by Grant Logan of Lawrence Livermore Laboratories in 1988, with technical details worked out in 1989.
		From the beginning, both John Rather and I have envisioned the use of laser power beaming as a stepping-stone to further industrialization of space, realizing that a large-scale demonstration of power beaming is a necessary step to the development of solar power satellites.
	www.sff.net /people/Geoffrey.Landis/laser.htp (897 words)

	Laser Propulsion Research Projects (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		In this video, the high energy laser beam came through a hole in the wall to the right of the picture, and was directed into the lightcraft engine by the annular mirror in the background.
		The optical rear surface of the lightcraft is used to focus the laser beam into the engine.
		The high pressure, high temperature plasma created by the laser absorption cools and expands out the rear of the vehicle, producing the thrust which propels the lightcraft into the sky.
	www.eng.rpi.edu /mane/lightcraft/Research/LaserPropulsion/laser_propulsion.html (292 words)

	Propulsion Directorate - 1999 Success Story - 2 (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The power of the 18 ms pulsed laser is sufficiently high that atmospheric breakdown occurs, producing a superheated plasma shock wave that propels the flight vehicle along in the direction of the laser beam.
		This laser also limits the flight altitudes to about 30 meters because of the divergence of the beam.
		Such a laser would provide the capability to reach vertical altitudes of up to 100 km and demonstrate the feasibility of this technology for low cost access to space.
	www.pr.afrl.af.mil /99/et99-2.htm (435 words)

	[No title]
		The classical means of propulsion is not hard to visualize as the craft is simply attracted to a strong magnetic field (similar in principle to the "tractor beams" of science-fiction but operating in the opposite direction).
		While the properties of the magnetic laser strength explored in Section 3 was somewhat speculative, the possibility that a charged hull could share the same quantum spin properties of a projected laser beam fit very comfortably into the framework of established physics.
		Secondarily, while UNITEL’s high-strength magnetic laser plasma is somewhat questionable (that is, the ability of an optical lens along with microwaves to amplify quantum effects as greatly as required by Section 3), it is certainly theoretically possible to create lasers which possess a magnetic field strength.
	www.stealthskater.com /Documents/UNITEL_9.doc (4877 words)

	Advanced Space Propulsion Study - INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY
		The effort was to include an emphasis on the study of antiproton annihilation propulsion and to present approaches for promoting the scientific and technology issues of this concept.
		The second paper (reprinted in Appendix B), "Laser Weapon Target Practice with Gee-Whiz Targets," was contributed to the Laser Propulsion Workshop held at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California (7-18 July 1986).
		The third paper (reprinted in Appendix C), "Exotic Propulsion in the 21st Century," was an invited keynote paper at the 21st Century Space Propulsion session of the American Astronautical Society 33rd Annual Meeting held in Boulder, Colorado (26-29 October 1986).
	www.transorbital.net /Library/D001_Int.html (709 words)

	Phase Transitions in Atomic Nuclei (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Over passed thirty years LP has evolved from a simple vision of somehow using a remote laser to transmit energy to spacecraft in flight, into a demonstrated propulsion technology.
		In this talk the physical principles of laser propulsion as well as currently existing and developing LP schemes and their applications will be reviewed (including the activities of Laser Propulsion Group at UAH).
		Currently he concentrates his research in the field of laser-matter interactions, where his major topic of study is ablative laser propulsion (ALP).
	www.cas.astate.edu /draganjac/PakhomovAbstract.html (289 words)

	Solar Sails and Laser Propulsion
		A space based laser is also significantly more mobile than a star.
		If the sail is capable of absorbing and usefully using the light however, whilst the thrust is halved, the light sail can now provide a source of power for the ship it is mounted on.
		In the case of using a laser to propel the light sail, this amounts to a combination of light sail propulsion and power transmission to the sail.
	www.itsf.org /resources/factsheet.php?fsID=89 (135 words)

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