Ace: YES! Drones Now Rechargeable By Laser

This story gives me an idea.

Speculation alert:


This reminds me of the Parkin Concept, which I covered back in 2010.  Basically, the idea is to use beamed energy to get to space.  But the Parkin device requires too much acceleration to allow humans to be onboard.  What if you could get around that problem in some way?

The Skylon concept proposes to use an airbreather to get to a high altitude,then switch to conventional rocket mode to get to orbit.  Now, my idea is this:  what if you could make the Parkin concept into an airbreather on the first leg, accelerate to what the first stage acceleration would have been with a first stage, then use a conventional rocket system to do the rest and get to orbit?

The reason that this may work is that the conventional first stage rockets are not going that fast when they drop off.  They are also pretty high in altitude, so basically the first stage just gives you altitude and enough acceleration so that a LH/LOX rocket can get you to orbit.  If sufficient acceleration and altitude could be provided by a ground based energy system and a hybrid rocket design like the Skylon could be employed to run on atmospheric gases, and then a LH/LOX mixture, you may be able to get to orbit that way.

 You would need an energy system and a launch from a desert site.  You could use a LFTR for the energy source and Parkin's microwave devices to get the energy to the spacecraft.  The LFTR would not require water for cooling like a typical nuclear device would.  That helps with the desert conditions.  Now, the desert is necessary because the air needs to be very dry to avoid problems with all that energy flowing through the air.

The objective is to make a completely reusable launch system with capability for fast turnaround.