US aerospace engineer Leik Myrabo reckons lasers are the future of flight, and pretty confident that ground-based lasers called LightPorts will be powering aircraft flying at hypersonic speed within 20 years.
That would mean a New York to Tokyo journey of around 45 minutes.
Mad or just misguided?
In an interview with Wired.com, Myrabo's states his credentials - which are impeccable. A professor at New York's Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, he has spent the last two decades developing laser propulsion technology, which he laid out during the recent Expanding the Vision of Sustainable Mobility conference.
Wired.com reports how Myrabo first got the idea in 1988 while working on the Star Wars anti-missile shield. The funnel-shaped craft with a parabolic reflector that channels heat generated by a laser into its centre, heating the air to about 30,000 degrees and causing it to explode, generating thrust while jets of pressurized nitrogen spin the LightCraft at 6,000 RPM to maintain stability.
But here's the problem. Even the most powerful laser remains capable of only a modest test flight although Myrabo is confident that problem will be solved before long. In his forthcoming book, The LightCraft Handbook, he says the problem has evolved from a scientific one to essentially an engineering one.
Myrabo is amazed that more aren't excited by the prospect of laser-propelled flight, but admits that it won't become viable until the cost of jet fuel becomes so prohibitive the aviation industry embraces an alternative.
