Serge, some people have dreamed about photon power it sounds like a great concept right
it's a great word but then you have to realize the practical problems on Star Trek they say
fire the photon torpedoes well what is a photon torpedo a photon torpedo is a flashlight because
what is the photon a photon is a particle of light that's all it is so you're basically
trying to energize a spaceship with a flashlight so now you begin to realize the problem it
sounds really neat it sounds science-fiction but the reality is the practical engineering
is very difficult yes flashlights have an impulse if you turn on a flashlight you can
actually measure the fact that the flashlight is moving slightly because of the impulse
created by shooting our photons but it's very small and that's the trick in order to create
for example a solar cell you would have to have a sail that is hundreds of miles across
sailing on photon power coming in from the Sun if you want to have photon engines you'd
have to have gigantic lasers firing energy from one side and how do you energize these
lasers with chemical reactions so you're back to the same problem chemical reactions so
there is a fundamental problem where is the energy going to come from so photon engines
sound like a great idea but in practice photons have very little momentum so you have to have
gigantic solar sails gigantic laser engines in order to propel them some people say let's
put them on the moon let's have a battery of laser engines on the moon and then the
spaceship could be very small it could be simply a gigantic sail you shoot lasers from
the moon to a sail and then push that sail into outer space well the advantage is that
if the engine is on the moon and you're simply using this engine to push a solar sail to
the Stars then you could actually reach a fraction of the speed of light so that's something
to look at now however I prefer to use laser power in a different way what is the fundamental
problem of rocket three the fundamental problem of the space program is in four four letters
it's a dirty word it is cost it would cost ten thousand dollars to put a pound of anything
into orbit that is your weight in gold you could go to the Space Station yes you can
go into outer space how much would it cost weigh your body in solid gold and that's how
much it costs for you to go to the Space Station and why is that because the rocket has to
carry its own fuel fuel is heavy something on the order of 90% of the weight of a rocket
is rocket fuel so if you could eliminate the rocket fuel you could increase the efficiency
of the space program by a factor of 10 to 100 and how could you do that with lasers
what you do is you have a bank of lasers on the earth firing at a projectile containing
water water leaks out of a sieve and the laser beams vaporize this water creating thrust
and that shoots the rocket into space this principle works it's been tested as a prototype
we can already do this but there's no vested interest there's no funding for the laser
or the microwave rocket so again the advantage of the laser rocket is the fact that your
energy comes from the ground that is the projectile does not carry any fuel at all other than
water and by shooting lasers you can vaporize the water creating steam and it simply blasts
off on steam that could reduce the cost of space travel enormously