Title: Beam Powered Sails

Speaker: James Benford

Abstract

Microwave and Laser-propelled sails are a new approach to future space travel. The capability to beam power in space can be used to propel science probes inexpensively and often to distant regions of the Solar System and beyond. Such sail probes can conduct very-high-speed science missions to the outer solar system, the interstellar region and even the nearby stars. Beam-powered scientific probes have the advantage that energy is only expended to place the payload and an attached sail in the region of scientific interest; and, of course, the engine is never thrown away. This beam source remains on Earth or in nearby space, so can be used to launch many such probes. The method has a substantial efficiency advantage over rockets for reaching speeds above 100 km/sec. This talk concerns experiments and simulations of the flight, spinning and stability of carbon fiber sails propelled using microwave radiation. It describes recent efforts on propulsion, electromagnetically driven spin for stability and possible advanced missions.

Speaker

James Benford's principal interests are power beaming for space applications and high power microwave systems from conceptual designs to hardware. In 1996, Benford founded Microwave Sciences, Inc., a California Corporation specializing in microwave-related research. Dr. Benford has authored 110 papers related to research on microwave and pulsed power applications. He is the author of HIGH POWER MICROWAVES, Artech House, 1992. In 1996, he was elected a Fellow of the IEEE. The citation is "For development of high power microwave sources and for transferring this technology into custom products." He received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Oklahoma in 1963, his M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at San Diego in 1964 and 1969.

Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Dr. Eugene Waluschka

Engineering Colloquium home page: https://ecolloq.gsfc.nasa.gov

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