Photonic Laser Thruster Promises Earth to Mars in a Week

serutan writes "Using lasers to drive spaceships has been a subject of interest for many years, but making a photonic engine powerful enough for practical use has been elusive. Dr. Young Bae, a California physicist, has built a demonstration photonic laser thruster that produces enough thrust to micro-maneuver a satellite. This would be useful in high-precision formation flying, such as using a fleet of satellites to form a space telescope with a large virtual aperture. Scaled up, a similar engine could speed a spacecraft to Mars in less than a week."

You can't go home again

[Harmonious Botch]

...we fried it duing liftoff.

Re:How "scaled up" is this?

[Mothinator]

It only says it can get the spacecraft to Mars in a week. It does claim to be able to stop once it gets there.

Re:How "scaled up" is this?

[Dachannien]

Actually, it says that it can get the spacecraft to Mars in a week and can stop once it gets there. But it doesn't claim that anyone will survive the impact.

Star Trek anyone?

[thatskinnyguy]

Wasn't the Photonic Thruster invented by Gene Roddenberry?

Re:acceleration?

[scoot80]

They didn't say you would get there alive. They just said you would get there in a week.

Lasers are better with Photons...

[fahrbot-bot]

Photonic Laser Thruster

Muuuuch better than using those LASERS without Photons.

[I hear that adding the photons also makes them lighter...]

Re:All a matter of scale...

[iamhassi]

"we'll have to see what else gets bigger with scale, other than just the thrust."

That's what she said ;)

Re:acceleration?

[ozmanjusri]

Would it be multi G-force worth, that might be impractical for humans.

Forget humans.

How much faster will my shark go with this thing bolted to it's head?

Re:Lasers are better with Photons...

[markov_chain]

Guys, stop making light of this invention! I'm sure Dr. Bae is a perfectly bright young man.

Re:How "scaled up" is this?

[azenpunk]

nasa knows how to stop things at mars, that's easy. (think: "feet, meters, same difference")

Scaling up is fun

[suv4x4]

I wonder why we don't just scale up a bridge right to Mars and drive to there with a drag racer car. If the latter is too slow, I suppose no problem, we can scale it up as necessary.

Re:Lasers are better with Photons...

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course don't forget to hang a mirror off the back of the laser rocket for those photons to reflect off of or it's not going anywhere...

Newton's Third Law of Motion would like to have a word with you.

Incredible!

[Riktov]

Senior Aerospace Engineer at AFRL, Dr. Franklin Mead, "Dr. Bae's PLT demonstration and measurement of photon thrust (is) pretty incredible. I don't think anyone has done this before. It has generated a lot of interest."

Perhaps the demonstration would generate even more interest if it were credible.

Re:Scale.

[Admiral Justin]

Not really, NASA has perfected slamming things into Mars. We're quite good at it.

IMPULSE DRIVE

[Anonymous Coward]

Hooray! They've finally discovered how to make an Impulse Drive engine. Now all they have to do is tie in a fusion reactor and voila! sublight speed! I'm just kidding. I didn't RTFA.

Re:acceleration?

[Hucko]

Do you currently find 1G uncomfortable?

Re:How "scaled up" is this?

[dwywit]

Moties, here we come!

Re:How "scaled up" is this?

[MrNaz]

Survival isn't necessary. Just get your ass to Mars. G-G-Get your ass to Mars.

With all due respect to James Doohan...

[Spasmodeus]

Scaled up, a similar engine could speed a spacecraft to Mars in less than a week.

Aye. And if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a wagon.

Re:acceleration?

[E++99]

His demonstration thruster produces 35 micronewtons.

35 micronewtons / .0005467722 Km/s^2 = 64 milligrams, so if we were using this to power a marscraft with the mass of the acetominophen contained in a single extra strength tylenol tablet, it would be more than 10x too heavy. Of course they said it could be scaled up, but that's a heckuvalot of scaling.

I doubt the smallesst possible manned Mars vehicle could be less than 1,000kg. That's a scaling factor of 15.6 million. I can jump over 3 feet on the trampoline in my back yard, which translates to a maximum velocity of 4.23 m/s. If I scale that up by 15.6 million, I would be launching myself at 66,000,000 m/s, far exceeding escape velocity, and reaching Mars under my own power in under 30 minutes.

Re:acceleration?

[Anonymous Coward]

Backwards.

Re:How "scaled up" is this?

[Smight]

You must have forgotten that nuclear power, by definition, harms the environment.
That's just how it works.
There's no environment to harm in space so nuclear power can't possibly work out there.

Re:acceleration?

[pintpusher]

If you put another thruster at the other end of the ship, then you have to spend the rest of the trip unbolting all the tables and chairs from the new ceiling and rebolting them to the new floor. And taking all the sheets off the new bottoms of the mattresses and putting them on the new tops. And reworking all the plumbing so the water comes out of the old drains and somehow runs into the old faucets.

Since you've got to steer the thing at some point anyway, why not use whatever that mechanism is to just flip the thing around, Its way more fun and worse case, you'll have to mop up a few buckets of puke from the vertigo. Well, okay, worst case something breaks and you tumble out of control for eternity, but that's always a possibility whether you flip the thing or not.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:acceleration?

[somersault]

Market the trip as a nice hot sauna vacation. Half of the ship is toasty and humid, the other half can have a nice cool pool. You could also separate the main drive from the living quarters of course?

Re:acceleration?

[TheRaven64]

Interesting moderation. You're currently at +5 insightful, for two statements:

• That the grandparent post was funny.
• That you are an idiot.

Both of these could reasonably considered informative, however the second is likely untrue, since in my experience idiots are quite likely to be the last to realise, and the moderation totals on the grandparent would have informed even the most humour deficient. Or are moderators now giving karma to people who admit their errors? If so, have I accidentally logged into some kind of bizarro-Slashdot, where everyone is polite and respectful? And is there a way of making sure I don't accidentally end up on the other one again?

Re:acceleration?

[Hal_Porter]

But what about the heat? It's quite difficult to cool off lump of metal in a vacuum without discarding hot material to do so. Even if you could feasibly power a craft to Mars with this, how would you stop yourself from arriving as Astronaut McNuggets?

Our chief scientist, Davros McDonald, has calculated the ultimate evolutionary form of the human race to be McNuggets. Why do you struggle against progress?

Re:acceleration?

[aliquis]

But then the living quarters would never leave earth orbit would they? ;D

Re:acceleration?

[SunTzuWarmaster]

The current space shuttle seems to deal with the heat from explosives fairly well in the atmosphere and in space. They use a model called "let's not put it next to the astronaut's faces".

Re:Lasers are better with Photons...

[jollyreaper]

Guys, stop making light of this invention! I'm sure Dr. Bae is a perfectly bright young man.

Yes, but how coherent is he?

Now that fits well

[sircastor]

Photonic Laser Thruster... perfect. Sounds like it came right out of a pulp Sci-Fi Serial. "Sir!" "What is it Smith?" "The Photonic Thruster, it's out of power! We're dead in the water!"

Re:acceleration?

[SleptThroughClass]

"If you don't mind going through the Sun..." OK, you've just toppled the people worried about heat from the drive.

Re:acceleration?

[tehcyder]

If you don't mind going through the Sun, that 1/2 G will get you Earth to Jupiter, in the worst geometry possible, in seven days and one hour and thirty minutes.

I'm not a rocket scientist, but isn't that kind of a deal-breaker?

Re:acceleration?

[suggsjc]

You must be new here...

Re:acceleration?

[Homr Zodyssey]

I am Nugget Sec. Together with Nugget Thay, Nugget Jast and Nugget Caan, we make up the Cult of Mayo. All of Humanity will kneel before the might of the New Nugget Empire. You will comply! Exterminate! EXTERMINATE!

Re:acceleration?

[tkw954]

If you don't mind going through the Sun, that 1/2 G will get you Earth to Jupiter, in the worst geometry possible, in seven days and one hour and thirty minutes.

I'm not a rocket scientist, but isn't that kind of a deal-breaker?

Not if you go at night.