World record flights of beam-riding rocket lightcraft - Demonstration of "disruptive" propulsion technology

Abstract

On 2 October 2000, a 12.2-cm diameter, 50.6-gram laser-boosted rocket Lightcraft flew to a new altitude record of 71-meters (233-ft) at White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) in New Mexico. The PLVTS 10-kW pulsed carbon dioxide laser, located on the High Energy Laser Systems Test Facility (HELSTF) powered the record flight, as well as six others two of which reached 48.4-m (159-ft) and 56-m (184-ft). These were the first outdoor vertical, spinstabilized flights of laser Lightcraft to be performed with assigned launch windows secured from NORAD, with the cooperation of WSMR range control to avoid illuminating LEO satellites and/or low flying aircraft. Besides nearly doubling the previous altitude record of 39 meters (128-ft) set on 9 July '99, the Model #200 Lightcraft simultaneously demonstrated the longest laser-powered free-flight, and the greatest 'air time' (i.e., launch-to-landing/recovery). With a modest investment of under a million dollars, a string of ever-increasing Lightcraft altitude records have been set over the past four years since the first flight on 23 April 1997. This embryonic, propulsion concept embodies disruptive technology that promises to radically transform our ideas about global flight transportation and space launch systems, over the next 15 to 25 years.