Beam-Riding Flight of a Laser Propulsion Vehicle Using Actively Controlled Pulse

This paper discusses active laser control using a genetic algorithm and a mirror-actuating system to achieve kilometer-order in-air flight using a laser propulsion vehicle while riding a beam. A 10 kg vehicle reaction driven by a strong shock wave is examined using our flight simulator to analyze interaction with unsteady blast wave propagation based on coupling calculation between hydrodynamic simulation of the shock wave propagation and orbital simulation of the vehicle flight motion, and the generated impulses are characterized by the spherically symmetric Sedov solution. Beam-riding flight with an initial y offset of 5 mm is successfully sustained by controlling angular offset, while vehicle acceleration is kept low for safe launch to the target altitude. A system delay of laser control is introduced into the flight simulator, and beam-riding flight is maintained for a 20 ms system delay using delay correction following prediction by six-degree-of-freedom equations of motion. This study also examines ...

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