A near term laser ablation of micropellets can be made to rapidly accelerate one ton space probes to reach Pluto in one year. The NASA New Horizons launched in 2006 took 9.5 years to reach Pluto and weighed a little less half of a ton. A ten megawatt laser system in geosynchronous could accelerate a mission in 2 hours up to over 10 AU per year speed. Having multiple systems could more than triple the speed to over 30 AU per year. The NASA New Horizons travelled at about 3 AU per year.
Lab tests have been performed to confirm the momentum coupling to be about 40 Newtons for each megawatt.
A system of multiple lasers and pellet beams could accelerate many missions to the solar gravitational lens point within 20 years of launch.
Each one meter telescope at the solar gravitational lens point can use the 865,000 mile diameter of the sun to focus light from stars and planets on the opposite side of the sun. Once in position, it would take a telescope few weeks to assemble megapixel images of a target planet.
Mass produced telescopes sent to those points 4 light days away would be the same as sending probes light years away into those other solar systems. We would be able to see large islands on the surface of other planets up hundreds of light years away.
The pellet beam systems can be used over and over to send hundreds of probes and missions all over the solar system.
Batteries and Capacitors Charged by Solar Panels to Get the Intermittent Power
Here is a NASA table of energy storage for space.
Lightweight solar power for space has been worked on for over a decade.
Redwire acquired Deployable Space Systems in 2021.
Deployable Space System, DSS, developed a roll-out array, ROSA, EDU that employs an innovative stored strain energy deployment to reduce the number of mechanisms and parts. The elastic structure maintains stiffness throughout deployment for partially deployed power generation. The rectangular design can be configured in many ways by either lengthening the booms, adjusting the length and width, or attaching several winglets onto a deployable
backbone. Lengthening and/or shortening the booms provides power scaling without changing any of the subsystems or stowed configuration. See below for a fully deployed ROSA array.
* four 150 kilowatt wings would be 600 kilowatts in power. The new wings are easy to deploy and do not involve astronauts.
* eight 150 kilowatt wings would be 1.2 megawatts
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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I’m a little confused. Is this powered by a laser in geosynchronous orbit or on the ground ? If its in orbit, how? A 10 Megawatt laser to start? Are they planning on launching a 100 ton Small Nuclear Reactor on the next generation of Space X super heavy to power it? That’s a lot of power for a laser to output. How do they plan on generating all those electrons? I’m sure the smart physicist folks have figured out the mass and momentum of the giant orbiting power station and space laser complex, but I can’t help but wonder why, once the laser beam is fired, Newtons third law of motion doesn’t come into effect? Shouldn’t there isn’t a equal but opposite reaction pushing back on the free floating laser complex, slowly pushing the whole thing out of its orbit? I didn’t watch the video, it’s nearly 7 hours long. What happens when you fire a laser in space?
Easiest way would be to have 10 Megawatts of capacitors or batteries that gets charged up by solar.
https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/sst-soa/power-subsystems/#3.5.1
That makes more sense. I was incorrectly thinking about some type of continuios power generation. That allows 8 panels to charge capacitors and batteries for 20 plus hours and then get 2 hours (max) of laser propulsion. 10 megawatts of electricity stored in about 15,000 lbs of batteries. Thanks for the picture of the Redwire solar panels. Neat new stuff as always. Thank you for the clarification.
Do it
If pellet is electrically charged (and laser doesn’t erase this charge), and the spacecraft has a static electric field, which reflects the pellet, the momentum brought by one pellet can be increased, as it could be reflected. I will check the details in the video.
Make it so!