from Hacker News

DARPA program sets distance record for power beaming

by gnabgib on 6/15/25, 10:40 PM with 101 comments

• by Szpadel on 6/16/25, 11:58 AM

  what concerns me is that it's wild laser beam in potentially public space. anyone that would accidentally cross that potentially invisible line could get killed or severely hurt.

  imagine something reflective entering this beam, it could blind people in a very large radius.

  for me it means that thus would still need some pipe/fiber that would protect world from this laser.

• by inasio on 6/16/25, 5:33 AM

  “It’s a lot easier to send a power beam directly up or down relative to the ground because there is so much less atmosphere to fight through,” Jaffe explains. “For PRAD, we wanted to test under the maximum impact of atmospheric effects.”

  Super impressive! My only complain is that this was done at the White Sounds desert in New Mexico, at over 1200 meters of elevation. For maximum impact they should have done it in Florida on a hot humid day

• by petermcneeley on 6/16/25, 2:59 AM

  "reflects onto dozens of photovoltaic cells arranged around the inside of the device which convert the energy back to usable power."

  This is no different that what we were considering two decades ago for the space elevator competition. One of the problems with this approach is that as the photovoltaic cells heat up their overall efficiency decreases.

• by jauntywundrkind on 6/16/25, 2:08 AM

  The application to drones seems most clear: beam drones some extra power as needed. Or continually!

  I wonder how big that receiving apparatus is. Whether the receiver is gimballed, or whether the drone itself has to fly a heading to aim at the sender: TBD.

• by williamDafoe on 6/16/25, 4:25 PM

  This will come in handy when DARPA builds the Phaser Cannon used to blast the Talosian fortress under the direction of Number One in the 23rd Century ...

• by westurner on 6/16/25, 12:22 PM

  Is it possible to steer the weather by heating the atmosphere with power beaming microwaves?

  Is it possible to cancel the vortical formation of a tornado or a hurricane with microwave power beam(s)?

  Does heating the atmosphere with microwaves change the weather, or the jet stream, or the cloud cover?

  What sort of a fluidic weather simulator could answer this question?

  Is there a fluid simulation device that allows for precise wireless heating of certain points in the fluid?

  If so, there could be international space law to study and control for the known and presumed risks of space-based microwave power beaming.

• by janalsncm on 6/16/25, 1:42 AM

  Could this also be a viable alternative to HVDC lines for civilian applications?

• by neya on 6/16/25, 5:09 PM

  Finally they decided to open up Nikola Tesla's work huh? :)))

• by ChrisMarshallNY on 6/16/25, 9:40 AM

  > New Mexico

  Great stuff.

  Do Seattle, next.

• by cryber on 6/16/25, 7:40 AM

  The popcorn is a very nice touch

• by b00ty4breakfast on 6/16/25, 2:11 AM

  This seems very silly. It's either a death ray project in a fake mustache or somebody had earmarked a bunch of money that they had to spend before it expired.