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Comments on Laser-Powered Aircraft Model Tested
A nifty laser-powered model plane was tested in Osaka, Japan earlier this week. (Read
the complete story)
| "In Jerry Pournelle's book, A Step Farther Out, (a collection of lectures he gave in the late 70s) he mentions another laser powered plane that they were test flying. (possibly maser, but its been a while since I read it) Which worked kind of like and enclosed version of the laser lightcraft that are being expirimented with now. (which were also described in his book) As he described it then, they were expirimented with, but the one was canceled since the politician who was pushing it died, and the other one ran out of funding after building a succesful full scale test plane. (actually, taking a commercial plane, and retrofitting it with engines that used ground based lasers to provide the heat to burn the the air, which it used without fuel)" (Ashley 3/10/2006 8:53:27 PM) |
| "The laser mentioned in the book was not used to provide power as such but to give a boost to a light sail equiped spacecraft (You're right - I was referring to the general case in which a fixed power source was able to beam energy to the moving craft. The Magbeam system is similar in this respect.)" (Delster 3/13/2006 2:40:22 AM) |
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