Background: Laser Motive is based in the city of Seattle where they develop power-beaming systems (a way to transmit electricity without wires). The company had a strong start in 2009, when their first project, stage one of the NASA Power-Beaming Challenge, was a success. The challenge involved beaming power to a robot cable-climber that ascends a long vertical cable suspended by a helicopter. LaserMotive's climber was the only model entered in the competition to ascend the full length of the cable, going 3,000 feet skyward. [video]
Laser Motive Co-Founder Dr. Jordin Kare is a leading physicist, aerospace engineer and one of the industry’s top experts on of laser propulsion (aka. high-energy laser power beaming). Dr. Kare has been involved in the development of laser and space technology for more than 20 years. He was the project leader for Mockingbird, a conceptual design for an extremely small reusable launch vehicle, developer of the Sailbeam interstellar propulsion concept, and was involved with the Clementine lunar mapping mission.
Laser Motive Co-Founder Tom Nugent served as Research Director for LiftPort Inc. – the space elevator companies, and one of the pioneers in the development of the modern space elevator concept. While at LiftPort, Nugent led the research team that outlined a realistic path to space elevator development, as well as working on a variety of milestone tests of robotic lifters. Nugent’s other space development work includes liquid-fueled rocket engine development through the MIT Rocket Team, and advanced fusion propulsion research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Interview:
(1) What's your favorite 'big-picture' goal for LaserMotive? We've heard some discussion of beaming solar power from space to Earth...
Tom Nugent: There are two 'big-picture' long-term possibilities for LaserMotive. I would like to demonstrate power beaming from orbit. There's a big story behind that single sentence. Power beaming has a long history of people proposing big giant systems, but they never get built because it's too big of a first step. Those systems have needed to be big because they've all assumed the use of microwaves instead of near-optical wavelengths, and the longer wavelength of microwaves means your transmitter and receiver need to be immense. To justify the big antennas, you need to send lots of power.
Tom Nugent: But you don't go from nothing to 5 Gigawatts in space in one step. It will never happen, from an economic perspective, if nothing else. I believe that you need to do a much smaller demonstration, but one that is big enough to be useful. Lasers can scale down in size so that you could put something as small as a few hundred watts, but lighting a lightbulb or two is probably too small to have the needed impact for a demonstration. Something on the scale of, say, 10kW would be interesting, and could be done for a reasonable budget. So it might get funded, AND it would demonstrate the possibilities.
Tom Nugent: It is very likely that, once you get up to transmitting tens of gigawatts from space that you'll want to use microwaves. But there are going to be lots of niche applications (e.g., for forward military bases) that only need tens of megawatts that will be possible with lasers.
Tom Nugent: The other big picture goal is to demonstrate laser launch, Jordin's very cool idea about using economies of scale to create an array of lasers to power rockets into orbit. Currently, chemical rockets heat up their working fluid by exploding it. But the rockets work by generating hot gases, and you can heat up a gas with lasers instead of explosives, allowing you to leave the complicated, expensive (ideally reusable) parts on the ground. I will let Jordin talk more about why laser launch is so exciting and why it could reduce the cost of getting to orbit.
Tom Nugent:These long-term goals, though, can't happen without a lot of development. Our near-term projects, such as power beaming to UAVs, will lay the groundwork for those later projects.
Dr. Kare: Space to Earth power beaming is a fascinating possibility, and as Tom notes, probably easier with lasers than with microwaves. But except in special cases, like military uses or disaster relief, it has to compete with many Earth-based options, so while I'd love to have LaserMotive involved in developing it, I don't see it as the project with the greatest impact.
Dr.Kare: Laser launch is of more interest to me because it's something that can be developed quickly and relatively cheaply -- with a modular system of the kind I've been advocating, the development work is all done at a small scale, so you don't need to spend most of the money until the system is ready to deploy. And I really don't see any comparably good options for making space launch much cheaper -- rockets are expensive, despite the best efforts of people like Elon Musk at Space-X, and all of the ingenious ideas for reusable rockets, hypersonic jets, etc. seem to need many billions of dollars to develop.
Dr.Kare: I'd add two more "big" possibilities, one easy and one hard. The easy one is beaming power from Earth to space. We should be able to provide power and propulsion anywhere in space out at least as far as the Moon using lasers and space-based relay mirrors. That would provide the equivalent of the interstate highway system and the utility grid for space industry -- a way to get around quickly and efficiently, and a way to plug in your machines without needing to haul your own power plant.
Dr.Kare: The hard one is powering aircraft - big ones, not just UAV's -- with lasers. Right now, airplanes are the last place where there's just no alternative to burning hydrocarbons (except maybe burning hydrogen), and fuel costs are a big part of their expenses; they're also starting to be targeted as sources of CO2 and high-altitude pollution. Plus, airliners spend most of their time up above the clouds, where they'd be easy to reach with beamed power. But air transport is a huge industry with an enormous infrastructure -- not just technology and hardware, but regulations, business agreements, operating procedures, and so on -- so getting it to adopt something as radical as beamed power will take a long time.
(2) You're developing new technology, a new company, and quite possibly a new market. What are some of the biggest challenges you've faced in communicating what you do?
Tom Nugent: By creating a new market, our biggest obstacle is going to be educating our customers about what laser power beaming is and what benefit it can provide them.
(3) LaserMotive's UAV PowerLink is one product you've established - we also see a ground-based power-beaming application in the LaserMotive Point-to-Point (P2P) product. What's in your future? What other more immediate applications are you considering?
Tom Nugent: The other possibility is a variation of the P2P Power Link, which would be a mobile version that could be used for disaster relief. Imagine being able to beam power into the middle of a city right after some natural disaster. The beamed power could help turn on communications links, or perhaps even run an emergency field hospital.
From a technical perspective, the UAV Power Link, the P2P Power Link, and the disaster relief Power Link are very similar to each other. We are focusing on the UAV market first, but as we demonstrate capabilities in that field, we expect to be able to quickly move into the other markets.
(4) We've enjoyed following the Space Elevator Games. Congratulations on your victory! The SpaceWard foundation suggests that one reason to build a Space Elevator is because "We have outgrown our habitat and need to expand it." Do you agree?
Tom Nugent: Thank you! I agree that humanity needs to expand into space, for a variety of reasons (resources, energy, social diversity, etc.). I don't agree, however, that the space elevator is the way to get to space. I believe a combination of technical and economic factors will prevent the space elevator from being built on Earth in my lifetime. It's certainly feasible on the moon or Mars, but Earth is too hard for now. We need a shorter-term solution for creating a large-throughput transportation infrastructure (i.e., a way of putting lots of stuff into orbit every month). Laser Launch may be a way to get there.
(5) Okay, easy question. What are you reading?
Tom Nugent: Who has time to read? :-) I read a variety of blogs, newsletters, and news sites to keep up on various topics.
Dr. Kare: Other than news and a few online comics, I seem to manage about one book every couple of weeks, and there are several I'm partway through. But most recently, I've been reading a lot of Alistair Reynolds, including Deep Navigation. I also just re-read Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, which was a lot of fun after nearly 20 years.
