lasers Archive

The $100 million Breakthrough Starshot program has issued a request for proposals. Timeline The next 5 years to determine the feasibility of both laser and sail. (Starshot’s sail committee, a photon engine committee and a systems engineering committee.) Tthe goal …

Beamed propulsion could achieve single stage to orbit. It could be 6 to 100 times cheaper. Most of the rocket becomes payload. DARPA funded developing a heat exchanger for direct energy. They tested a microwave beam director for a 100KW …

Arxiv – Breakthrough Starshot is an initiative to prove ultra-fast light-driven nanocrafts, and lay the foundations for a first launch to Alpha Centauri within the next generation. Along the way, the project could generate important supplementary benefits to solar system …

The subcommittee on Emerging Threats and capabilities met Dr. Michael Griffin undersecretary of defense for Research and Engineering on accelerating new technologies to meet emerging threats. Rapid technological advancements have the potential to change the very character of war. Michael …

Greg Matloff and his wife, C Bangs, have researched the use of holographic films for solar and laser pushed space sails. Matloff’s work is described at Centauri Dreams. Greg Matloff is on the Advisor’s Board of Yuri Milner’s $100 million …

In 2016, the Shanghai Superintense Ultrafast Laser Facility (SULF), is a single cylinder of titanium-doped sapphire about the width of a Frisbee. achieved an unprecedented 5.3 million billion watts, or petawatts (PW). The lights in Shanghai do not dim each …

The breakthrough architecture uses a kilometer-scale, multi-hundred-megawatt phased-array laser to beam power to a vehicle that converts it to electrical power for a multi-megawatt electric propulsion system that produces a specific impulse of 58,000 seconds. Such a system would enable …