have been playing a lot of gran turismo 6,and it is a fantastic game.especially loving the gran turismo prototype cars that some car manufacturers have created for the game (the red bull x prototype is mental for one thing).

just reading about this car prototype and it sounds amazing tbh.engine powered by a laser 😯

it sounds very tron,but it does sound like a great way too power a vehicle (with light)

what do you think?

http://www.gizmag.com/chevy-chaparral-2x-vision-gt/34905/

I think my eyes will never recover.

It is terrible

Virtually B*ll*cks…….

What exactly do the “lasers” vapourise/ionise?

Two very intelligent responses there.
Granted its lacking in some practical elements but, it is after all a concept and this is mostly from where new technologies spring.

The article’s a bit thin on detail but it suggests that the lasers create a pulsed shockwave that would push the car forwards and air backwards.

This is technology ‘borrowed’ from a prototype rocket propulsion system.

Basically, the laser is focused into a cavity and heats the air..air expands and propels craft upwards/forwards…
The benefit of this on a ‘space ship’ is that the ‘energy source’ for the propulsion can remain on terra firma! You just need to be able to fire it accurately into the rocket’s ass…..
and you need air too…

Hmm….

DrP

It may make 900 vritual hp but put it on a dyno and I reckon it makes none at all. Also I can’t tell which way up it goes.

Reaction mass for the spaceship could be provided by materials other than just air. You could always use air for the initial part of the boost, then gradually switch to air/water in the upper stages and finally to water.

The trouble would be that you would need a) a bloody powerful laser and b) a very fast tracking laser.

When you have both of those, it’s only a small step away from someone using it to cook stuff whizzing round in orbit. Or planes.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9ac-w4DW8[/video]

The future is heeeeeere..
DrP

willard – Member

The trouble would be that you would need a) a bloody powerful laser and b) a very fast tracking laser.

Depends how you do it tbh- if the lifting body has some control of its own it can do the balancing and fine control and the steambeam just needs to provide thrust- the ship should only ever be thrusting straight away from the beam so if it’s tracking fast, something’s probably gone wrong 🙂

You missed out c) Some people would take offence at building bloody great laser cannons pointing at the sky, if you can shoot a ship into orbit then you can probably shoot things already in orbit.

So it heats air. Where are the air intakes that are big enough to move enough air to provide “900bhp” of thrust (not that you measure thrust in bhp of course).

Take a look at any reaction engine that uses air as it’s working fluid (a jet engine for example) and you’ll notice that the intakes are rather large, here’s one of my favorites:

(in this case, at M3.2 cruise, the intakes actually provided around 70% of the forward thrust!)

And that’s the problem with “virtually” technology, it is just that virtual, it doesn’t help with real technology because it, generally speaking, also ignores the laws of physics…..

DrP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9ac-w4DW8

The future is heeeeeere..
DrP

So, that guy is developing a space launch system that uses a laser to heat AIR to get his reaction force? er, that’s kinda the thing about the high (>500k feet) atmosphere and space, there really isn’t a lot of air about………

I mean, that video shows him getting a small light spinning top, upwards a couple of meters. Well, i could just throw it higher, so perhaps i should suggest that as the next space launch system?

It’s not totally pie in the sky, it comes from physics. It mention an ‘air generator’, perhaps this is some kind of solid fuel source that is dense but will vaporise into a gas. Could even be liquefied air.

All it’s doing is adding heat to a gas and doing it efficiently.

Nowhere near enough info in there to call it bollocks. Maxtorque seems to be imagining a huge amount of stupidity in people who are simply demonstrating principles. I’m pretty sure most space propulsion scientists know about the space vacuum thing 😉

Maxtorque seems to be imagining a huge amount of stupidity in people who are simply demonstrating principles.

Er, anyone who says like in that video of the laser guy, “I hope to be launching satellites into orbit in 5 years time” when their achievements to date are getting a very small, light aluminium disc about 3m into the air in a room, is not exactly demonstrating they are the smartest kid on the block though eh!

(especially as just that video is older then 5 years now…………)

Do they do an estate version?

it’s not totally pie in the sky, it comes from physics. It mention an ‘air generator’, perhaps this is some kind of solid fuel source that is dense but will vaporise into a gas. Could even be liquefied air.

And where exactly is all this “air” stored on the car? Remember, a conventional Internal Combustion engine has the benefit of the fact that the working fluid is present in its environment. A 900bhp internal combustion engine with say a 100litre (~75Kg) fuel tank, will use something like 938Kg of air from the atmosphere around it to burn that fuel! if you fancy a laugh, have a go at putting 938kg of air into a box and see how you get on…..

maxtorque – Member

So, that guy is developing a space launch system that uses a laser to heat AIR to get his reaction force? er, that’s kinda the thing about the high (>500k feet) atmosphere and space, there really isn’t a lot of air about…

Except of course, you don’t need to generate lift all the way into space- a shuttle SRB does most of its work within atmosphere then drops off. So you could either use the beam stage as just the first step with rockets for higher lift, or you can just bank enough velocity to achieve orbit, earlier

(I am not going to defend the car, Gran Turismo Physics is fine in its place but for anything on the ground, driven wheels are just going to make more sense even if it did work)

And where exactly is all this “air” stored on the car?

How much do you need? Thrust would depend on how much air is being expelled out of the back and how fast – so you would need less if you heated it up more and expelled it faster.

BUT

This is not an internal combustion engine. And I don’t think that’s how it’s meant to work.

Imagine a line of little bombs placed along the road. Detonate the first one just behind the car and the shockwave shoves it forwards. It rolls along to the next one and that one detonates when it’s just past the car – pushes the car along a bit more and so on. No fuel required to be on the car.

In this case it’s focusing a laser beam on a point in the air just behind the car, where the air gets so hot so quickly it’s like an explosion – similar to how lightening creates thunder. Effect is the same – no fuel required onboard, just power for the laser.

I think that’s what they are getting at. The laser beam is shaped to shape the shockwave in an optimum way.

Would make an incredible noise I think.

Would need to be size of a battleship just to power the lasers.
Awesome way of dealing with tailgaters though.

If they can ever crack Fusion then all this starts to makes sense

Are people seriously debating the technical merits/demerits of a fantasy car here? Why don’t we just have a moan about how the Enterprises anti-matter reaction engines are bull as well whilst we’re at it…

Molgrips –

the 671-kW laser “pulses beams of light that focus in a shroud, creating shock waves that generate tremendous thrust.”

So it’s in a cavity. As for how to get the air there:

With help from an air generator

I can only assume nobody bothered to read that bit. But yes, you’re right in saying there should be an abundance of air in comparison to an IC engine, you are after all only focussing on a very small part. I’d be surprised if it required much in the way of forced fuelling at all depending on the efficiency of the system.

As for the disk guy, I saw stuff about that in first year at school (so about 20 years ago), they were getting it about 10m or so up before wind blew it off course.

Nuclear thermal rocketry is the immediate future tbh, NASA already has plans for NTR stages to send SLS vehicles to Mars.

Why is the woman in the Chaparrel 2x video named Pete?

I was a tiny bit hopeful this was a working prototype. I’m half amused, half miffed at all the design people talking about it as if it’s real, but I suppose “We design stuff digitally so it makes it kind of easy to put in a videogame” isn’t as exciting.