Before the lasers and the lunar prizes, the Turners were already building things that leave the ground. This is the trail that led to the DARPA Lift Challenge.
The KC Space Pirates didn't start with a space elevator. They started in a workshop, with a family that has been designing and building aircraft across three generations — from ultralights and crop sprayers to power-beaming robots and, now, heavy-lift aircraft for DARPA.
Where the Turner aviation story begins. Starflight Aircraft produced more than 250 ultralight aircraft — putting affordable flight within reach of everyday pilots and establishing a family knack for building light, capable machines that actually fly.
Starflight's successor. VSTOL Aircraft built ultralight-based crop sprayers — turning the family's lightweight-aircraft expertise toward practical, low-cost aerial agriculture through the late 1990s.
In the same era, Brian Turner also provided IT services to Revolution Helicopter, deepening the family's ties across the light-aircraft industry.
The Space Pirates entered NASA's Power Beaming Challenge, chasing a purse of up to $2 million to wirelessly power a robot climbing a kilometers-long tether — a real step toward a space elevator. They began by reflecting sunlight off a large mirror array, then switched to an infrared laser for 2009, fielding the only fully automated laser-tracking system in the competition.
They went toe-to-toe with major U.S. and Canadian universities and professional laser outfits. Through an arrangement with rival team LaserMotive, the Pirates came away with roughly a $90,000 share of the prize.
Captain Brian Turner became a public face for the space-elevator idea, including an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien.
Featured on Late Night with Conan O'BrienAt the VOX Theater in Kansas City, Kansas, the Pirates kept a modified AR-Drone quadcopter aloft on beamed laser power for 25 hours, 0 minutes and 35 seconds — more than doubling the previous endurance record of 12 hours 27 minutes. They did it with 500 watts of laser power and ordinary, non-exotic photovoltaic cells, for under $30,000 in hardware — a fraction of the cost of earlier attempts.
It was a glimpse of what beamed power makes possible: flying machines that never have to land to refuel.
Longest laser-powered flight — 25 hoursThe Pirates returned to NASA competition with their power-beaming heritage, winning one of four $50,000 Phase 1 prizes for a laser solution to move energy across the lunar surface — the problem of powering work in the Moon's permanently shadowed regions.
Today the crew is chasing a share of a $6.5 million purse to reinvent heavy vertical lift — an aircraft that carries more than four times its own weight around a five-nautical-mile circuit. Three generations of Turner engineering, aimed at the sky.
See the current mission →Nine engineers, makers, and one captain carrying the Turner legacy into the DARPA Lift Challenge.
Meet the team →