Our rival, LaserMotive, made a press release
yesterday that they had kept a stalker UAV flying for 48 hours in a wind
tunnel. This is great news for the technology of power beaming but it certainly
steals some of our thunder.
It is clear to me that they have been
working on this for some time and the flight is not in response to our efforts.
The one thing I do think is in response to us is the 48 hour timeframe.
So... Congratulations LaserMotive on a job well
done!
Our response is that we
are going to scale back the duration of our flight to something easier for us
to manage. The 48 hours was making the venue and staffing a challenge and now
there is little point in beating them by some negligible amount.
We have set up a campain over at Indiegogo to raise funds for the record attempt. In order to keep bringing you the cutting edge in power beaming we need to figure out how to fund it. Crowdfunding is a new idea that is made possible by the Internet.
So after the games were over we were sitting here with all
of this power beaming tech stuffed in my garage along with a network of
friends, teammates and sponsors. It made sense to look to develop the near term
applications for power beaming. So I am announcing a new direction for the KC Space
Pirates. Laser Powered Flight. In order for wireless power beaming to develop
to all it’s grand expectations it has to find and take the path with stepping
stones from here to there.....