Speaker 1: In the not too distant future, strange craft will zoom
across our skies. These are not UFOs, They're not alien
craft from another planet. These are machines developed and built
by human engineers and designers. Today's science fiction will become
tomorrow's reality. These are the aircraft of the future. What
you are about to see who is a glimpse into
the future of aviation. Winged aircraft as we know them
will soon be a thing of the past.
Speaker 2: Aviation technology today is probably about to undergo some of
the most impressive and revolutionary changes that we've seen since
the Wright Brothers.
Speaker 1: Across the world, designers are racing to create fantastic new
aircraft that can fly humans higher, faster, and further than
ever before, new military designs, airliners that can take us
to the edge of space and around the planet in minutes,
and new propulsion systems that will make the jet engine
obsolete forever. One casualty of this race for the future
sits abandoned on an airfield. This fighter is more advanced
than aircraft and service, but it is already obsolete. It
was the loser in the engineering competition of the century.
In nineteen eighty five, the US Air Force demanded a
new fight airplane, one that would incorporate the most up
to date advances in stealth and agility. Two multi billion
dollar designs by rival companies took to the air in
a fight to the dead. One was the YF twenty three.
It had diamond shaped wings. The other was the YF
twenty two. The winner would become the backbone of the
US Air Force, the loser a billion dollar pile of scrap.
A fierce fight was about to take place between the
two most advanced fighter aircraft ever built. The test pilots
fought to outperform each other, but after the YF twenty
three's wheels touched the ground, it never flew again. With
its greater performance and agility, the YF twenty two was
chosen to take the US Air Force into the next millennium.
It is a truly remarkable craft. It will be able
to reach speeds and perform maneuvers far beyond the reach
of the present front line fighter, the F fifteen.
Speaker 3: Even though it doesn't look enough radically different from all
other airplanes have.
Speaker 4: Been built, it is very much different.
Speaker 3: The engines, the airframe are all tuned to go fly
around supersonic and the most maneuverable airplane that's ever flown there.
Speaker 1: The key to the YF twenty two's success is in
its advanced composite materials. These absorb radar and give it
the same signature as a small bird. Its tail fins
sweep back behind the engines to shield the jet exhaust
from heat seeking missiles, to preserve its smooth outline. Its
own weapons are hidden inside internal bombays. Even its fuel
tank cat is hidden beneath its shark like skin. Building
and testing any new fighter is a process that would
be impossible without the bravery and dedication of the test pilots.
Speaker 3: This airplane has been a part of my life for
the last ten years, and getting it to this point
and getting it in the air, it actually takes a
lot of effort. I'm not sure I got it in
me to do it again.
Speaker 1: The YF twenty two incorporates the latest in thrust vectoring technology.
Jet engines are pushed along by their exhaust gases. If
these are redirected by adjustable nozzles, the tail of the
plane can be pushed around much faster. With thrust vectoring,
a fighter can change direction or quickly the YF twenty
two was expected to dominate the air for twenty years,
but there is a rival on the horizon. It also
uses thrust vectory. This plane may be the ultimate fighter
of all time. It may even be faster than the
y of twenty two and is without any doubt more
maneuverable in close combat. This is the Sukhoi thirty seven.
It looks like any other fighter, but it can perform
impossible maneuvers. Fighter aircraft are traditionally fast but very heavy,
which makes them difficult to turn. The Sukhoi thirty seven
can perform heart stopping maneuvers that defied gravity. For any
other fighter, these maneuvers would be well beyond their flight envelope.
They would stall and crash. Thrust vectory and small canard
wings on the nose allow the pilot to throw the
su thirty seven around the skies like an aerobatic splane.
Twenty tons of military methal can reverse direction instantly. This
amazing agility would give it a decisive edge in combat.
On its first public appearance, its pilot issued an open
challenge to dogfight against all comers. No one took up
the offer. The Suhoy is master of the skies, but
with fighters becoming faster, the pilots are getting left behind
in the search for ever more maneuverable planes. It's the
pilots themselves that are now click To beat the punishing
physical effects of high g maneuvers, the US Air Force
looks for a particular type of pilot. The shorter and
more compact they are, the higher the g's they can take.
They are now conducting tests to see if women are
the perfect shape for the combat pilots of the future.
Major Sharon Heiss is one of the Air Force's female
officers undergoing G force experiments to test this theory. This
centrifuge at right Patterson Air Force Base can accelerate the
pilots from zero to seven g's in four seconds. Sharon,
ready to go to baseline.
Speaker 5: We got five and a half g's lood for you
for thirty seconds.
Speaker 1: Okay. Most pilots blackout at five g's as the forces
increase blood rush from the pilot's brain towards her feet.
Using special breathing techniques and inflatable pressure trousers, pilots can
counter this effect and take much higher g's than they
could if they were unaided, often as much as eleven g's.
Speaker 5: It's been rumored that the data says that women actually
do take the G forces better tolerate highg's better than men.
Speaker 1: But it seems there are still physical limits on the
maximum amount of g's that any pilot can take.
Speaker 2: You're not going to fly beyond about ten gs on
a regular basis. Pilots simply they're human beings. They can't
withstand that. What we're doing a great deal of, however,
is integrating pilots in with automatic systems. They will not
be able to exceed the G forces, but they can
perform a lot of functions that are too fast for
pilots to perform by themselves without the help of computers.
Speaker 1: Modern cockpits are crammed with the latest computer systems. Soon,
the pilot won't even need a joystick steerpoint, move steerpoint.
In the near future, they will be able to fly
their plane by simply looking in the direction they want
to go.
Speaker 6: Move steerpoint.
Speaker 1: A low power infrared beam shines into the pilot's eye
flight view. By analyzing the reflection, a computer calculates exactly
where the pilot is looking. Link to a control system
that can also understand voice commands. Pilots will soon be
able to talk to their planes. Even more astonishing is
a development that will allow pilots to fly by thought alone.
Electronic sensors mounted in the pilot's headband detect his brain waves.
By concentrating or relaxing, the pilot can manipulate his brain
waves and fly this virtual plane through an obstacle course.
His task is to try to steer this fighter through
the hoops. A black bar allows him to see if
he is thinking left, right, or straight ahead. This simulated
flight has no other input, no joystick, no pedals. With
techniques like this, pilots of the future will be able
to control the most radical aircraft. But the biggest cause
of air crashes remains simple human error, and the only
way to eliminate human error is to fly without pilots.
Right now, unmanned aerial vehicles are one of the biggest
areas of research and development in the industry. This six
foot flying saucer, known as Cipher, is an intelligent surveillance
aircraft developed for the battlefield of the future. Powered by
counter rotating blades, it can hover or fly up to
sixty miles per hour on board cameras transmit live video
pictures back to base. Cipher can identify and track hostile
targets from one hundred tanks to a single foot soldier.
It can take off, spy, and land without any control
from a human pilot. Cipher's most deadly asset is its
ability to float through the urban backfield. It can peak
around corners or spy through windows, searching out snipers or
terrorists with highly tuned sensors. One day, this machine's descendants
may patrol our neighborhoods as robotic policemen. In the future,
these may become the ultimate urban warriors.
Speaker 2: One of the major motivations for using unpiloted surveillance vehicles
is that we don't have to risk a pilot to
get into very high risk situations. We can fly a
fairly small aircraft in take advanced photographs, having them transmitted directly,
without having to risk the fact that a pilot will
get shot down. If we shoot down an unmanned aerial vehicle,
it cost a few hundred thousand or a few million dollars,
but we're not risking a pilot.
Speaker 1: But the perfect unmanned vehicle would be completely undetectable. It
should be quiet without a noisy engine, and it should
be tiny, perhaps small enough to fly through a window
and into a room undetected. To meet this challenge, designers
are experimenting with radical new concepts and models.
Speaker 6: Pre flight check. Rudder control is good, elevator control checks,
trim is good, Throttle check that's fine? Ready for flight?
What's the whim? Speed Stewart, Here we go.
Speaker 1: The aero Vironment company in California builds miniature air vehicles
or MAVs for military and civilian use. Their smallest remote
controlled surveillance vehicle is a flying disc just six inches across.
It's even equipped with its own onboard video camera and transmitter.
It's so small that it is completely invisible on radar.
This MAAV may look like a toy, but it's equipped
with a satellite navigation system. With its battery powered propeller,
it will fly for six miles.
Speaker 6: Some of the components that are quite small on the
test aircraft are the flight computer and receiver, weighs only
one and a half grams altogether. The propulsion motor up
front is approximately five to seven grams. One of the
challenges of making structures this size and just handling them
is they're so small that you can't hold them with
your fingers. You can't see them clearly with the name
it eye, so you do have to work under a microscope,
and you do lose lots of parts when you sneeze
or you just bump the table, and that's just part
of the part of the game.
Speaker 1: The same team is also developing miniature helicopters, but there
is a major problem in building aircraft this small. As
propellers and blades get smaller and smaller, they become aerodynamically inefficient.
Speaker 6: As you get down to these smaller sizes, the air
moleculars seem much larger relative to the wing, and the
flying becomes more like swimming through water as opposed to
flying through air. Because of these difficulties and aerodynamics, we're
looking to nature, because nature has solved all these problems
with birds, dragonflies, and fruit flies.
Speaker 1: Already, flapping wing models have been constructed. They are always
highly inefficient and never generate as much lift as an insect.
Duplicating the performance of insect wings is one of the
holy grails of aviation. Insect wings are the most efficient
lifting devices on the planet until recently. The reason for
this remained a mystery. At Cambridge University in England, doctor
Charles Ellington has solved the puzzle of how insects generate
such incredible lift. It's a quest that has taken him
over twenty five years.
Speaker 7: To build a good mimic of a real insect and
how it moves its wings. We study films and we
came up with this, which of course flaps its wings
up and down the way you would expect it to do.
It also moves its wings perpendicular to that. Many insects
show can of a figure of eight wing motion, and
we can do this with these two movements. Then you
have to control the angle of attack of the wing,
and to do a good job you have to control
it at the base of the wing and at the
tip of the wings, so that you can throw the
wing into this camber profile that you see on the downstroke.
Is the wing moves down, generating lift up like that,
and then of course you have to flip the whole
thing over because on the upstroke what you have is
a reverse camber like that, so the wings moving up
generating lift again supporting its weight. But you have to
be able to change the shape of the wing all
the way from the base to the tip, and from
the front to the bag, at every moment of the
wing beat.
Speaker 1: The technology needed to control and coordinate these four different
types of wing movement is so complex that it has
to be controlled by computer program Because the model needed
to study the movement accurately is so large, the speed
of the wings is slowed down to one beat every
two seconds. On a real insect, it would be twenty
beats per second. This model exactly replicates the way in
which the common hawk moth flaps its wings. But Charles
Ellington's team also discovered an unusual phenomenon.
Speaker 7: All right, let's have some smoke.
Speaker 1: By studying insect wings in smoke, they noticed an unusual
vortex was created by the downstroke. This observation solved the
riddle of how insect wings produce so much lift. The
effect was confirmed by a live moth when it was
suspended in a wind tunnel filled with layers of smoke.
Speaker 7: As the wing moves down to cut the very thin,
sharp leading edge of the wing moving through the air,
and just as if you move a spoon through a
cup of coffee, you see the floe swirling off that edge.
It separates and just swirls up like that into a vortex.
And a vortex is like a tornado or a whirlwind,
and it's a low pressure region there. Things get sucked
into a tornado. And so sitting here with the vortex
spinning like that, low pressure running all along the wing
right here, and this low pressure sucks the wing up,
and this is what's producing the extra lift on the
wing and getting two three times more lift out of
these wings and out of conventional wings.
Speaker 1: This machine was never designed to fly, but now that
Ellington has unraveled the mystery of insect flight, soon there
will be miniature navs as small as real insects.
Speaker 6: In the near future, three to five years out will
be developing dragonfly size micro vehicles that will be able
to fly down hallways and in windows and in through
air ducts.
Speaker 1: Packed with tiny electronics batteries, transmitters, and with miniature cameras
for eyes. The cyborg dragonfly will be a master of
disguise with huge amounts of lift. It will be highly
energy efficient, invisible to radar, impossible to shoot down. The
only danger it will face will be getting.
Speaker 8: Swatted nine eight, seven, six, five, four, three two one.
Speaker 1: Hoover with no pilot to compromise performance. Even more unusual
craft and propulsion systems have been designed and tested. This
incredible machine was originally designed to shoot down nuclear missiles
and satellites. Yeah just twelve inches long, gyroscopically balanced, and
with thrusters at key points around its body, it is
capable of instant changes of direction.
Speaker 5: Of a pover.
Speaker 9: Cover tracking cover.
Speaker 10: All.
Speaker 1: No airplane could ever catch this machine. In the nineteen sixties,
NASA investigated the idea of whether it was possible to
fly an airplane without wings at all. The lifting bodies
were a series of experimental wingless gliders built during the
development of the Space Shuttle. The cross section of the
aircraft body is the same shape as a wing, producing
all the lift needed to fly. These initial low level
tests proved so successful that NASA then built the M
two lifting body. It was carried to a fifty thousand
feet by a B fifty two bomber and then released.
As with all radical new designs, the tests were very risky.
To generate enough lift, these early lifting bodies needed to
glide incredibly fast. Weighing two tons, the M two sent
its pilot plummeting to the earth at over two hundred
miles per hour. Gliding at this speed in such an
unusual shape, the lifting bodies were extremely difficult to control.
On its fateful sixteenth drop, the M two began to
roll wildly just above the runway. The craft was destroyed.
It hit the ground at two hundred miles per hour
and rolled fifteen times. The pilot survived, but the lifting
body program was severely set back. But in a hangar
somewhere in California, the lifting body is ready to make
a comeback. Barnaby Waynefan is a professional designer who worked
on the B two bomber. He's turned his attention to
the home build market and has resurrected the lifting body design.
Even stripped down to maintain its secrecy, the unusual shape
is still visible.
Speaker 11: The difference really between this and a conventional airplane as
we've combined the functions of the wing, the horizontal tail
in the body all in one simple shape. And because
it's a short, kind of thick shape, it's very light.
With the lightweight, I don't need quite as much aerodynamic
efficiency because I'm not carrying as much load, so I'm
not working the air as hard to lift the airplane.
Speaker 1: It looks a bit like a stealth aircraft, but the
civilian facetmobile is designed for simplicity.
Speaker 11: It does have some interesting care teristics, the most important
of which is that it won't stall and it won't spin,
and since stall and spin accidents are still a very
common cause of death actually in general aviation, that to
me was very important because I've eliminated one of the
major ways that private pilots get themselves in trouble.
Speaker 1: Often mistaken for a UFO. This aircraft may lead to
a whole new breed of home build aircraft. Designers around
the world are trying to build radical new aircraft. At
this one secret airbase outside Moscow, Russian engineers created what
looked more like a flying saucer than a plane, called Tarielka.
It was conceived during the height of the Cold War.
This early secret footage shows the first scale model tests.
Their methods were low tech, but their results were remarkable.
It looked impossible, but the Tarielka flew.
Speaker 2: Russian designers have a tremendous amount of imagination and great capability.
They have been working under a difficult condition in recent
years because they don't have much money and therefore it's
hard to get things accomplished. But some of the most
advanced aeronautical and space system designs have been done in Russia.
Speaker 1: The initial tests were so successful that construction quickly began
on a full size Tarielka, looking like a craft from
another planet. It could carry up to a dozen passengers
and become the new executive jet of the future. The
engines are housed inside the main body. The small wings
provide no lift at all. They helped stabilize and steer
the machine, but a shortage of money from the Russian
government has already caused work to stop on the Tarielka.
A waterborne version was also tested. It was designed to
travel just above the surface of the water, using a
cushion of air to provide lift for very little thrust.
This is called ground effect, something Russian designers had used
in their most unusual aircraft. This is the Akronoplan. Larger
than a jumbo jet, it holds the world record for
the greatest lift for any aircraft and amazing one thousand tons.
This astonishing machine is powered by eight huge jet engines,
travels at three hundred miles per hour only a few
feet above the Ocean and could carry one thousand Soviet marines.
Since the Cold War, the project has been crippled by
financial problems. Today the original monster sits in dry dock.
A more familiar way to carry hundreds of passengers around
the world is the seven four seven. It has carried
one point six billion people and has traveled more than
twenty billion miles, the equivalent of flying the entire population
of Los Angeles and New York City to the Moon
and back. But with passenger numbers expected to double by
the year twenty ten, new airliners twice the size of
the seven four seven are needed to meet the demand.
A narrow dynamics team from NASA, Boeing, and Stanford University
is developing a new super airliner able to hold one
thousand passengers so that the full scale version can use
the existing airport facilities, Its overall wingspan will have to
be no greater than the seven forty seven to create
the extra room and the extra lift needed for nearly
one thousand people and their luggage. This design has abandoned
the traditional shape of fuselage and wing. It has fused
the body and the wing together into a design called
the BWB. The blended wing body.
Speaker 5: The advantages of this configuration over a conventional airplane with
separate fuselage and engines mounted on the wings is both
in terms of its aerodynamic performance its drag, and in
terms of its structural weight, so its lighter and cleaner aerodynamically.
This translates to a predicted fuel savings of as much
as thirty percent.
Speaker 1: The blended wing body is a concept over seventy years old.
Recently it was used in the ultra stealthy B two bomber.
Only the engine exhaust protrude from this futuristic shape. This
concept used to be called the flying wing. The designers
knew that it could carry huge amounts of cargo or bombs,
but flying wings have no tailplane. Versions such as this
YB forty nine were highly unstable and almost impossible to control.
Not until the introduction of computerized technology did the flying
wing become viable again. Many modern radical designs are intrinsically
too unstable to be flown by hand.
Speaker 5: The technology has gotten to the point that we can
now build electronics and flight control systems small enough to
fly inside models of this size. That means that we
don't have to risk a test pilot on a very
new idea. We can, at the very early stages of
a program, build something like this and investigate the most
critical and unknown issues.
Speaker 1: Onboard. Computer control systems are pre programmed before each test flight.
With fifteen flaps and ailerons, the blended wing body needs
more than double the number of control surfaces, far more
than a human pilot could handle alone. The pilot steers
as normal, and the computer then coordinates the numerous control
surfaces with its seventeen foot wingspan. The blended wing body
model might look like the ultimate and toy aircraft, yet
this design could be the shape of the airliner of
the future. For the design team, their first takeoff was
a nerve racking moment. The success of the whole project
rested on the first test flight. If the model crashed,
five years of work and four million dollars would be
wiped out in an instant. But the first blended wing
body model flight was a complete success. In fact, it
was so successful that it demonstrated that this radical shape
could outperform conventional designs by a huge margin. Creating a
successful new aircraft that first breaks and then reinvents the
rules is what every aircraft designer lives for.
Speaker 5: We like building things that are different, not changing things
a little bit and seeing what happens, but rather thinking
about what we'd really like to have happen, and starting
with a clean sheet of paper.
Speaker 1: The greatest challenge of all is speed. Large airliners like
the blended wing body will remain subsonic. Concord is the
only existing supersonic passenger plane. Designing an aircraft like this
presents an entirely different set of problems. In a classic
Cold War sting operation, faulty plans of Concord were leaked
to Soviet spies. Their answer to Concord that tupled off
one four to four was a flawed design. It crashed
in front of the world's press at the Paris Air
Show in nineteen seventy three. Concord Or is the fastest
passenger jet flying. It cruises at twice the speed of
sound New York to London in just three hours, but
there are only fourteen of them in service. They only
carry one hundred passengers, and they are very expensive to
fuel and service. Concord is over twenty years old. In
that time, no one has taken on the phenomenal task
of designing a replacement. Until now, NASA has recently started
work on a new supersonic airliner known as the HSCT,
short for High Speed Civilian Transport. It is twice as
large as the Concorde and can carry three times the passengers.
Speaker 9: In order for an airplane to fly at over two
times the speed of sound, there really has to be
shaped kind of like a rifle bullet, long and slender.
The nose has to be pointed, the tail has to
be pointed to allow the air to come back smoothly
together after the airplane parts it in supersonic flight. That's
not a very structurally efficient shape.
Speaker 1: One of the difficulties with Concord is that the long
pointed nose severely limits the pilot's vision on takeoff and landing.
Speaker 9: The Concord has a nose that actually droops down so
that the pilot can see the runway. All the mechanical
widgetary required to drop that nose probably weighs five or
ten thousand pounds. If we, on the other hand, can
develop an airliner which doesn't require the nose to drop down,
then we can save five to ten thousand pounds and
make the airplane much more economically viable. The challenge in
having a fixed nose type of aircraft. Is that you know,
we're asking the pilot to fly an air plane with
no windows to see out front, just windows on the side.
Speaker 1: In the HSCT, pilots will have to land the airliner
without ever seeing the runway. No other aircraft has ever
attempted this. Three hundred lives will hang in the balance.
The pilots will have to rely on a failsafe system
of video, radar and infrared cameras.
Speaker 9: If you lose power, what happens to that display?
Speaker 1: What are your backup systems?
Speaker 9: How is the pilot going to respond in a failure
mode situation?
Speaker 1: To test the feasibility of windowless cockpits, an unusual experiment
was carried out in especially modified Boeing seven three seven.
Installed in the hold was a blind windowless cockpit directly
connected to the aircraft's controls. Infrared cameras showed the pilots
where the runway was. The test pilots attempt to land
the fifty one ton aircraft without ever seeing.
Speaker 4: The runway collapse are sad.
Speaker 1: Chargel play? Amazingly, the tests proved that the advanced cameras
and sensors could provide even better images than the human eye.
After proving the viability of windowless landings, NASA test pilots
were then able to fly the HSCT years before one
could be built. They programmed the flight characteristics of the
HSCT into the simulator, the biggest in the world, the
seventy million dollar Vertical Motion Simulator at NASA.
Speaker 11: Langley Ready Motion, Ready Motion wordy okay.
Speaker 1: Over one hundred and twenty feet high, the Vertical Motion
Simulator can precisely simulate the movement of any aircraft from
a fighter to a supersonic airliner. This is the biggest
theme park ride in the world. It is so loud
it sound was used as the roar of t Rex
in the film Jurassic Park. For a pilot, it is
an invaluable source of information on how new aircraft will handle.
Projects like this are funded by NASA because they depend
on so much basic research. To go beyond this stage
of development, the HSCT will need private investors if it
is to turn into reality. Some estimate that over two
hundred of these super fast airliners would be needed to
satisfy the world's airlines. The HSCT might one day be
a common sight in our skies, but even this plane
will have limitations on its speed.
Speaker 2: Commercial supersonic aircraft all used relatively conventional turbine powered jet engines,
that is, their turbine based engines, as we call them.
If we want to fly much faster than say, mock
three or three and a half, we're going to have
to go to different kinds of jet engines.
Speaker 1: The jet engine was first invented by England Sir Frank
Whittle in the nineteen forties. Every jet engine flying today
still uses the same principle. Even the biggest and most
advanced jet engine in the world, the Rolls Royce Trent
eight hundred, is little different. It can generate one hundred
four thousand pounds of thrust and hurl the largest airliners
through the skies. It is so robust it can even
cope with thirty thousand gallons of water an hour in
mid flight without faltering. But even this ultimate jet engine
needs air to burn its fuel. It has an altitude limit.
The X fifteen is the fastest aircraft ever to fly.
In nineteen sixty seven, it flew at mach six point seven,
an incredible four thousand, six hundred ninety miles per hour,
and reached an altitude of over sixty miles, the very
edge of space. If an airliner could fly this high,
it would experience virtually zero drag and be able to
fly from Los Angeles to Sydney in less than an hour.
But its jet engines cannot operate this high as there
is no oxygen to feed them. The X fifteen was
propelled by a rocket engine, it didn't need oxygen to
burn its fuel. Even the Space Shuttle needs to carry
more than its own body weight and fuel to reach
the edge of the atmosphere three to one and live on.
The Shuttle orbiter weighs a mere seventy seven tons, but
it has to carry one seven hundred and eighty five
tons of fuel to lift off. If we want to
build airliners that can travel as fast as the X
fifteen or the Shuttle, we will have to develop a
completely new type of aircraft, one that flies in and
out of space. This new design will take off like
a plane, but fly like a space ship. An exciting
new aircraft only possible because of a new type of propulsion.
Speaker 4: It's a new concept in propulsion systems, and therefore it's
really a concept in propulsion systems that can enable new
classes of vehicles completely unlike vehicles that we see today.
Speaker 1: Right now, Tom Harsher and the rest of the NASA
Boeing team are developing an air breathing rocket engine prototype
called hyper X. It will be so powerful that it
will shatter all previous speed and altitude limits. Just twelve
feet long, the unpiloted prototype will be carried to one
hundred thousand feet by a Pegasus booster rocket used for
launching satellites. It will be released and its experimental engines ignited.
Hyper X will use its unusual curve shape to scoop
oxygen from the thin air and rammitted high pressure into
its combustion chamber. Mixed with explosive hydrogen. It will propel
the craft forward at an unbelievable two miles per second.
The test will last only seven seconds.
Speaker 4: The kind of range for the vehicle design that Hyperrex
represents scaled up to a reasonable sized vehicle is ten
thousand miles with a two hour endurance. You're looking at
a fourteen thousand mile flight, which is about halfway around
the world.
Speaker 1: White Sands Missile Base, New Mexico. Here, tests are taking
place on what might be the single biggest revolution in
propulsion ever. Visionary designer Professor Lake Mirabeau is developing a
saucer shaped aircraft that flies on a beam of laser light.
A full sized vehicle of this design might one day
carry people around the world or into space. Its power
supply and engine remain on the ground.
Speaker 12: Lightcraft is a completely new flight transportation concept. You have
to imagine highways of light that vehicles would ride upon.
You don't need turbines, compressors, combustors. You don't need that
technology on these vehicles. The work is done for you
by the light.
Speaker 1: This light is a remnant of Cold War weapons technology.
Housed in this building is the control center of a
powerful laser gun that shoots the small craft into the sky.
Speaker 12: Okay copy the plivot's laser is go for a graphite
run stand by.
Speaker 1: Before each flight, the laser is tested for intent on
a solid block of.
Speaker 6: Graphite four three two one.
Speaker 1: Firing this highly polished cone focuses the laser beam, vaporizing
the air around it. This is then mounted beneath a
nose cone. The craft is simple. It has no moving parts,
no engine. Focusing the laser beam at the bottom of
the craft creates a series of explosions that pushed the
craft skyward. But when Professor Marabeau first proposed this amazing
new concept, no one believed it was possible.
Speaker 12: There really wasn't anybody in the academic institution that I
was going to that was only to sponsor this kind
of research, So I really I had to get into
this from the back door by actually participating in the
star Wars business.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety seven, NASA financed the idea. Early tests
were held indoors, but after just a few months it
was flying higher than the roof of the lab and
had to be moved outdoors. Horizontal wire tests were used
to see how far the laser could propel it. Then
it was time for the laser light craft's first free flight.
Professor Mirabeau makes its spin at up to six thousand
revolutions per minute with compressed air to keep the lightweight
model balanced during its flight. At this speed, like a
spinning top, it stays perfectly centered in the beam until
it runs out of power and falls back to Earth.
The Laser light Craft is now flying higher and further
each day ten seconds. The plid's laser's.
Speaker 10: Arminge five four three two one.
Speaker 1: As the model lifts off the square shaped laser beam
is focused to maintain its power and effectiveness, but the
ten thousand watt laser beam could destroy the laser craft
if it fails.
Speaker 12: The next step is that we have to build one
hundred kilowatt laser and with that laser we'll be able
to fly vertically to the edge of space, say thirty
kilometers straight up.
Speaker 1: Professor Mirrabau is already conducting indoor tests on this much
larger design. In a few years, this laser craft could
deliver a small satellite into orbit, and in fifty years time,
the laser light craft's descendants might even be as common
as the family car.
Speaker 12: You'll walk out your door, touch your magnetic levitation belt,
and float up to the vehicle. It'll fly around, pick
up a couple of your friends, motor over to a
microwave laser boost station. In ten seconds, you're out the
top of the atmosphere, leaving it escape velocity for the moon.
At nighttime, all you'll see there is this extremely bright
flash of light leaving the planet, and people say, well,
there goes Frank.
Speaker 1: In the future, the only limit will be the designer's imagination.
Speaker 4: I think history shows that there has never been limits
that lasts very long right now. There are even some
people that say that the speed of light is not
a limit, which we believe it is today, it probably isn't.
Speaker 1: The technologies that will make these amazing vehicles possible are
already available.
Speaker 2: We've really begun just to scratch the surface of what
we really can do in aviation, and I see many
many changes coming about during the next few years based
on technology that we already understand.
Speaker 1: All around the world, new developments are taking place in propulsion, avionics,
and aerodynamics, developments that will take us far beyond the
limits of conventional aircraft. Developments that will make the simple
winged aircraft a thing of the past and change the
way we fly forever.