Beaming Power to UAVs, Space Elevators, and Someday, Earth: The LaserMotive Plan

[bananas]

http://www.xconomy.com/seattle/2010/04/13/beaming-power-to-uavs-space-elevators-and-someday-earth-the-lasermotive-story/?single_page=true

Beaming Power to UAVs, Space Elevators, and Someday, Earth: The LaserMotive Plan
Gregory T. Huang 4/13/10

Think it’s possible to shoot down a swarm of buzzing mosquitoes in mid-air? Or maybe you want to power up a remote flying vehicle? Tom Nugent is your man. The Seattle-area entrepreneur just might be the most versatile guy with a laser you’ve ever met.

Yes, a laser. Until recently, Nugent worked in the laboratory of Bellevue, WA-based Intellectual Ventures, the invention company led by Nathan Myhrvold, where one of his projects was the so-called “photonic fence.” This effort has gotten lots of media attention, most recently for an impressive demo at the TED conference in February. That’s where Myhrvold showed a video of a laser burning the wings off a flying mosquito in super slow-motion. The idea is this technology, implemented on a larger scale, could help prevent the spread of malaria or protect crops against flying pests.

But Nugent’s focus now is on something that might be more practical: power beaming. That means using lasers to deliver energy to remote sensors, vehicles, or base stations. It’s a two-way trick: the receiver has to have a solar cell to convert the laser’s energy into electricity. But as long as the solar cell is viable, the technology could be useful in any situation where installing a wire is impractical, where batteries run down, or where it’s too expensive to truck in fuel.

That’s really just the beginning, to Nugent’s mind. One of his ultimate goals is to be able to beam large amounts of solar power to Earth from space, presumably to help solve global-scale energy problems. For now, though, he’ll settle for beaming power to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and other remote devices, including very early technology that could help scientists develop something called a space elevator. These ideas, in sum, have turned into a small company called LaserMotive, based in Kent, WA.

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Via http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-04/skeeter-zapping-laser-entrepreneur-turns-sights-space-solar-power
which mentions:

The idea of harnessing lasers to deliver power to a receiving solar cell has slowly gained traction over the years. A U.S. company called Solaren signed an agreement with California-based Pacific Gas & Electric to supply space-based solar power by 2016.

Japan also plans to launch its own solar power satellite by 2015, as a precursor to a larger model that would provide power to 300,000 homes. Europe's biggest aerospace company, EADS Astrium, would put its own solar-collecting demo satellite into orbit by the end of the decade.

Another company working on this is www.spaceenergy.com

[Ian David]

1. This will be especially awesome when the "laser beams" are attached to the heads of sharks.

[krispos42]

2. I had the bug-zapping idea a few years ago

After reading about an experimental cancer treatment that had like 20 x-ray lasers focused onto a single point in space. The idea was to move the focus point around inside a person's cancerous mass. The radiation of an individual beam was fairly low, but at the focus the x-ray flux was enough to shred DNA.


So I figured that we could do it for flying bugs with about 6 masers linked to some kind of detection system. The six maser beans would all focus on flying bugs and activate at once. At the fusus of the six microwave deams the energy would be enough to make all the water in the bug boil immediately, cooking the bug in mid-flight.