Beaming Flight of Repetitive-Pulse Powered Vehicle for Satellite Launch

Abstract

To present a feasibility of high-altitude flight of a laser-propelled vehicle at supersonic speed, we have developed a flight simulator which has fluid-orbit coupling calculation module to reproduce impulsive flight reaction driven by blast waves. By high-power energy transmission through arrayed lasers together with the genetic algorithm (GA) controlled sub-laser, the supersonic flight is successfully achieved in the simulation for 32.5-g vehicle, while the angular offset should be suppressed as small as possible. Rather than translational position, controlling angular offsets by the GA operation is especially important to attain the km-order flight on the premise of the active control. Additionally, the vehicle weight, the vehicle size, and the input energy are scaled up to assess the stable flight of 10-kg vehicle. The active control technique has enough possibility to launch kg-order vehicle at supersonic regime with the optimized beaming strategy.