Jeffrey Gleason describes how to increase the space propulsion beaming range of an ion beam from 0.1 AU to 1000 AU by pinching the ion beam. He also describes getting 50 kilowatts per square meter of power by placing the beam generator at 0.05 AU (about the distance that the recent Parker Space Probe has reached). Mercury is at 0.39 AU from the sun. The beam system would be optimally placed about 8 times closer than Mercury to the Sun. We can always not go as close for improved but not optimal beaming systems.
This would mean Gigawatt power beam would only need 20,000 square meters of area. This would be 4.94 acres. This would tiny compared to previously proposed interstellar spacecraft beaming systems.
The beam would have months to accelerate instead of minutes.
The massive efficiency could either mean much smaller systems for the same mass of spaceship or a much larger spaceship. It can also mean human survivable acceleration to useful interstellar speeds.
It can also mean applying the same principles and systems for fast travel within the solar system.
There is still a lot of science and engineering work to validate, prove and build these concepts.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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Lovely. IF we had unicorn wands… then we could go interstellar. No, really: the math may well work out, but the conversion of sunlight and/or sun-heat to beam energy is far, far, far from 80% of Carnot efficiency. Cobalt and copper foils notwithstanding.
May’be ‘cuz I’m old, but this feels like discussing the engineering options for establishing a Kardaschov-II civilization. Whilst of course, we’re in no way near K–1 yet. Even a midge compared to a dinosaur’s worth.
The ion-beam and co-beam of laser energy is certainly one of the most promising gambits. Thing is, it is HYPER sensitive to varying magnetic fields. None of which are mapped to any precision through the inter-solar medium … and certainly not out to 1,000 AU.
So, problems.
Nice discussion though!
Thanks Brian.
⋅-=≡ GoatGuy ✓ ≡=-⋅
Yeah, I’d agree: Expecting your first statite to also have 80% Carnot efficiency is a bit much.
If you’re going to plan on pushing the limits, (And interstellar travel pretty much requires that you push SOME limit.) I think the sensible limit to start hammering on is self-reproducing machinery. Because then you don’t need to push any other limits, you can just throw essentially unlimited amounts of infrastructure at any problem.
We’re closer to that than most people realize, and could probably have a crude self-reproducing factory inside of a couple decades with a sustained push.
One correction, though. (I made this mistake myself.) It wasn’t “80% Carnot efficiency”, it was “80% OF Carnot efficiency”. Which is a lot more plausible…
Now, I seem to remember an old Forgettomori website called “Laser Stars, Laser planets.”
There was a claim that an asteroid hitting the Sun could spawn a laser in its wake…any idea how that might work?
I personally think the co-propagating particle and photon beam concept is the most promising; Because the photons and particles travel at different speeds, you get a stabilizing effect against instabilities, the photons tend to take any building instability and smear it out in the beam direction.