%
'TALIO
oerj
143
q
(AP)
arried
acks
es in |[j
ting
at i
ilgrimsi
'ere kil
j -
the fan
/ report;
! tollj
la as hij
said (tie?
*n suiQa
1 cities;;
several
ed befort
raqi leat
ida-linke:
Jsab ai
* suspet!
dying
mni-Si
5. pi
the
neon llis
e 1
festii/i
rating ft
omi
I’s c
peiroleiir
ittracted
offered
c worn,
nend
1 of Inst
me to dir
of Sigma
ty formtc
le popula-
n.
:ment for
rea-
lien.
§M
lid go u
as tlie
; or giviE
13,923.
rican oil-
many ani
ffer.
hould bf
lid.
A&M fe
ntEngfe’
t alip
rone yen
itutioalK
og, Ne«sl» ,l
jlioo.net
lion. For
an...
;s
Iplis!
i
ne
Scil Tech
Hi
The Battalion
Pale J|g§Wednefda>j March 3, 2004
By Kyle Ross
THE BATTALION
It would seem the researchers at NASA are always up to some
thing. Although recently, they may have figured out a new way to
keep something up. A team of scientists at the NASA Dryden Flight
Research Center has developed a way to power aircrafts with an
invisible ground-based laser, enabling planes to stay in flight for
extended periods of time.
The birth and evolution of the powered aircraft have changed the
world, and just like any other greatly utilized technology, with each
new step came the desire for the next.
Almost a century ago in December 1903, Orville and Wilbur
Wright accomplished the unthinkable. They designed and construct
ed the world’s first powered “flying machine.” Upon manned flight,
they marked the first time that a machine under the control of a pilot
had gone airborne, sustained flight and safely returned to the ground.
Mankind was never the same. Man had taken to the skies, and even
tually, powered flight was a mainstay for the military mid commercial
industry. Obviously to stay aloft, airplanes, as they came to be called,
needed some sort of energy source such as fuel, batteries or solar panels.
The problem with these forms of energy is that they constantly
need to be replenished. But Alan Brown, a member of the NASA
research team, describes laser-powered flight in a way that suggests
the days of refueling may someday end.
"It s like an extension cord in the sky,” Brown said. “The plane
will fly for as long as the laser is illuminating the photovoltaic panel
with energy. There is no limitation on how long the
can fly.”
The plane has an electric motor, and
a photovoltaic panel is directly con
nected to it. A laser beam with enough
intensity and correct wavelength is
directed towards the photovoltaic panel as
theplaneis in flight. The light energy from the
laser is converted into electrical power, and that
power is used to run the motor.
“Ifthe laser is removed from the panel, the motor
Paul Wilson • THE BATTAUOI^
will stop providing thrust, and the plane will glide to the ground,”
Brown said. “Actual experience was that the plane was flown until
the operator tracking (pointing) the laser at the plane got too tired to
continue and called for the flight to end.”
At this point, NASA has only built and tested a small-scale pro
totype aircraft. It has a wingspan of five feet, and including the pho
tovoltaic panel, weighs about 11 ounces. During testing, the plane
was hand-launched from a height above the ground inside a large
building. It successfully flew in tight circles before gliding down to
a triumphant landing.
“The reason the plane was built that way was to give the greatest
performance margin and require the least amount of energy to fly,”
Brown said. “Now that we have successfully flown the plane with
the laser, we can build a more capable plane to fly outside at greater
distances and for longer periods.”
If successful, this technology could lead to a revolution in the
telecommunications industry and become an asset to the military.
Theoretically, flight-sustaining aircraft could be flown over cities.
effectively replacing the use of
space-orbiting satellites. Cell phone sig
nals, as well as television and Internet con
nections, could be fed directly from transpon
ders attached to the plane. The laser-powered aircraft would also
excel as spy or communication planes for military purposes. Brown
said he even envisions the use of laser-powered aircrafts on Mars.
“An orbiting satellite with sufficient power could beam energy to
an airplane flying in Mars’ atmosphere on every orbit to top off its
energy storage system and thereby have the airplane fly for days or
longer,” Brown said. “Even robots on the surface could get power
from the orbiting spacecraft and do more than would be possible
with solar panels only.”
But the development of this technology is still very young. And
while it has raised eyebrows around the country, some say they will
believe it when they see it.
“This technology might work on a real plane as an alternative
power source, similar to ideas developed for the hybrid cars,” said
Dimitris Lagoudas, a professor of aerospace engineering and direc
tor of the Center of Mechanics and Composites. “But one of the
biggest challenges I believe is the transmission of laser power with
enough accuracy to always find the receiving photovoltaic panel.”
Kyle T. Alfriend, a professor of aerospace engineering and holder
of the Wisenbaker II Chair in Engineering, shares Lagoudas’ concerns.
“The pointing accuracy (of the laser) would have to be phenom
enal. Generally, the way we acquire a target with a laser is with the
reflection. The round trip time of a signal would make it virtually
impossible to acquire the target. By the time you get the
return signal, the plane would have moved a few
kilometers.”
Despite the challenges that lay
ahead, NASA is confident in its
accomplishment.
“The challenges of this project were
really of integration — how to put it all
together and make it work safely,” Brown said.
“I will say that I believe all the technology is
there, it just needs to be put together in a suc
cessful way.”
► Someone who downloads and watches hit movies
at all hours, just because they can.
THE NEWEST WAY TO GET HIT MOVIES: DOWNLOAD THEM.
STUDENTS GET 25% OFF* ALL MOVIES AT C0LLEGE.M0VIELINK.COM
Movielink
movies on demand
‘Terms and conditions apply. See website for details