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The application to drones seems most clear: beam drones some extra power as needed. Or continually! I wonder how big that receiving apparatus is. Whether the r
by jauntywundrkind 1y ago
The application to drones seems most clear: beam drones some extra power as needed. Or continually!
I wonder how big that receiving apparatus is. Whether the receiver is gimballed, or whether the drone itself has to fly a heading to aim at the sender: TBD.
- larodi 1y agoAnd have a great opportunity to drill some holes in birds heads. Sorry I really fail to recognise how beaming 1kw of excited particles is a safe thing to do just like this…
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- worthless-trash 1y ago[flagged]
- ChocolateGod 1y agoIt must not be safe to be out in the sun then.
- _Algernon_ 1y agoLast time I forgot sunscreen at a UV index of 10 my skin started peeling of after half an hour so...
- ben_w 1y agoDensity (and wavelength), rather than total power, is important. Sun's 1kW/m^2, and even then you shouldn't look directly at it, and being out in it all day without protection leads to sunburn.
- nkrisc 1y agoIt’s not, for an extended period of time. Now imagine it was collimated rather than diffuse.
- kurble 1y agoThat's the thing, sunlight is collimated. It only gets diffuse once it reflects of a diffuse surface.
- nkrisc 1y agoFair enough, poor choice of words on my part. What I meant was concentrated further (in terms of energy per area) than the typical concentration received at the surface of the Earth.
- vikramkr 1y agoSo there's this thing called sunburn...
- fleischhauf 1y agoif you are the military and you are using drones to win a war, I don't think birds are your primary concern tho
- cap11235 1y agoThat's basically an ad that appears to defense companies. Raytheon engineers love going "pew pew motherfucker".
- mensetmanusman 1y agoHand egg enthusiasts also love…
- larodi 1y agosure in that case everything goes, and is curious why has it not yet been done with... drones routing the laser or repeaters reinforcing it with every loop. i can't recall a scifi story promoting such system either.
- Traubenfuchs 1y ago[flagged]
- Traubenfuchs 1y agoHow about drones with a solar panel case? Would require a sunny day to work at all though. Tiny nuclear reactor?
- ben_w 1y agoOn the scale that useful nuclear reactors operate, a "tiny nuclear reactor" is the size of a shipping container. Even a tiny RTG is in the same range as a dumbbell.
- Traubenfuchs 1y agoWhile not reactors, how about nuclear batteries without heavy shielding?
- ben_w 1y agoNuclear batteries are a superset of RTGs. There are other kinds of nuclear battery, but the ones I've heard of outside labs, are extremely low power betavoltaics.
- cap11235 1y agoThe biggest issue for weight is that you are using trans-uranic materials. By their fundamental nature, they are heavy as fuck.
- ben_w 1y agoNope. Betavolatics can be just about anything that emits an electron. Could be tritium. Low power due to long half life and low decay energy, but not because it is low-Z. RTGs can be anything that gets hot from its own radiation. Loads of things with a short half-life and high decay energy, so phosphorus-32 would be a low-Z option, and polonium-210 (which still isn't transuranic) if you're completely disregarding safety. Big part of the mass budget is shielding, not source. This gets proportionally worse for small sources, as you need a certain thickness (proportional to r^2), while the emitter power is proportional to volume (r^3).
- contrarian1234 1y agoWhy not just beam power down the optical fiber? Optical fiber is exceptionally clear and works in fog and rain
- malfist 1y agoFiber transmits light, not rf. To get power out of fiber optics you have to have a photovoltaic cell on the other side and there's a limit for how much those can produce with such a collaminated light source. Using fiber optics for power is like trying to make a solar panel generate electricity from a laser beam.
- contrarian1234 1y agojust have a tiny steam turbine equivalent...? (some thermoelectric generator) You don't really need to be efficient. You have fans to blow air and dissipate heat on the other end after all
- 0_____0 1y agoYou should do the first round of engineering calculations on this.
- TeMPOraL 1y ago> Using fiber optics for power is like trying to make a solar panel generate electricity from a laser beam. Isn't that exactly what power beaming is, except typically with frequency range in microwaves instead of visible light?
- malfist 1y ago> except typically with frequency range in microwaves instead of visible light That's a big freaking deal.
- cap11235 1y agoeg, consider WiFi. They choose their bands carefully for wireless standards, and terahertz is pretty far from microwave GHz. I've never seen direct THz synthesis outside of partially-insane radar engineers.
- Havoc 1y agoSeems like that has a high chance of frying sensors on sats flying behind the drone though