Mars in a Week

Photon powered star ships have been the staple of sci-fi since the 70s. Now they may become a reality.

An amplified photon thruster that could potentially shorten the trip to Mars from six months to a week has reportedly attracted the attention of aerospace agencies and contractors.

Young Bae, founder of the Bae Institute in Tustin, Calif., first demonstrated his photonic laser thruster (PLT), which he built with off-the-shelf components, in December.
Young Bae’s photonic laser thruster (Photo courtesy Bae Institute) The demonstration produced a photon thrust of 35 µN and is scalable to achieve much greater thrust for future space missions, the institute said. Applications include highly precise satellite formation flying configurations for building large synthetic apertures in space for earth or space observation, precision contaminant-free spacecraft docking operations, and propelling spacecraft to unprecedented speeds—faster than 100 km/sec.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” Bae said in a statement from the institute. “PLT has immense potential for the aerospace industry. For example, PLT-powered spacecraft could transit the 100 million km to Mars in less than a week.”

Several aerospace organizations have expressed interest in collaborating with the institute to further develop and integrate PLT into civilian, military and commercial space systems, Bae said, and he has recently been invited to present his work by NASA, JPL, DARPA and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

Photons are the elementary particle responsible for electromagnetic phenomena. It’s the carrier of electromagnetic radiation, such as gamma rays, X-rays, ultraviolet light, visible light, infrared light, microwaves, and radio waves. When photons strike our eyes, that provides us the light by which we see. But they can also be channeled into an intense beam through the use of lasers. The push of the laser actually moves the ship through space. What Bae has done is come up with a stable way of doing this, which has eluded scientists for some time.

With a drive like this, it might make travel to Mars possible for humans. Provided they can get around the gravitation drag issue. 

Very exciting development.

Dunno why, but the last sentence of this post invoked a vivid image of Angry Homer Simpson… “Stupid gravitation drag...”

Posted by  on  09/13  at  10:47 AM
Page 1 of 1 pages

<< Back to main