You are aware that we’ve been shooting drones out the sky with lasers for about a decade now, right?

Not too long ago DHS/CBP freaked out over some balloons in Texas, thought they were cartel drones, shut down the airspace, burned them outta the sky with truck mounted lasers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/us-military-used-laser-take-border-protection-drone-lawmakers-say-rcna260887

JPL got 80% microwave power transmission efficiency at ~1.5 km, 8 years ago.

Granted, that was a fixed land point to fixed land point test, but also, it was 8 years ago.

I’ll take 50% efficiency loss over 10% chance of ‘everything explodes and crashes’ any day.

You can’t make a reasonable microwave receiver lighter than solar film and efficiency peaks around 50% in FIXED installations

https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/microwave-power-transmission

In JPL 30 kW power was transmitted for 1.54 km with reception conversion array having an efficiency of 80%

That was 8 years ago.

What I’m describing are… currently extremely active areas of research.

Microwave power transfer has been used for many applications since its inception by Maxwell. Wireless charging of EVs and UAV using microwave power are some of the widely researched examples.

you can easily assume less than a quarter (under 10%) when the target isn’t just moving, but is also changing angles and distance (you’d have to put the receiver on a gimbal like for cameras)

You should maybe look into the level of precision that things like Phalanx CIWS systems have at tracking a moving target, with the ability to throw bullets at it, and hit it.

Or basically any SPAAG type platform that throws rounds down range.

Or I dunno, MASERs used in deep space transmission.

Or all the research that has gone into developing tracking gimbal systems that do intentionally use lasers or some kind of DEW to shoot down small drones, or damage aircraft in flight, or burn out incoming missiles.

Hell of a lot easier to track a friendly aircraft.

and now it’s also interfering with flight (propeller airflow, unless you do weird propeller geometries or tilted body flight

Genuinely no clue what you are talking about.

Are you assuming only like, quadcopters here?

We’ve had RQ 4 drone aircraft the size of WW2 medium bomber planes, with jet engines, for 20 years now.

I’m fairly sure that a jet engine produces a considerable amount of consistent heat.

Do… you think aircraft engineers… do not know… how to handle… heat?

Shall I describe a ramjet to you?

Or maybe we could go with something like the Space Shuttle’s reentry tiles?

In conclusion, you are vastly uniformed as to the state of… not even state of the art technology, that would be incredibly relevant to this discussion.

We don’t even have automated battery replacement working on the ground, while stationary.

Building aircraft with a whole bunch of their body and mass that significantly changes, in flight, is extremely expensive and difficult.

Its why the V22 Osprey is widely regarded as a death trap, why we stopped building swing wing F-14s.

… Have you ever tried to uh, remove your car’s rear seats, while on the highway, at 60 mph, and then also installed new seats, from a neaby car travelling alongside you?

Ok now do that with aircraft, at 15k feet, going 600 mph.

Yeah I’m sure that’ll be about as efficient as Elon Musk’s approach to designing the Starship+HeavyBooster.

Oh, ok.

Even though this entire post is… about how it is small enough to fit on a drone, and efficient enough to power it for 3 hours.

Ok.

Gotcha.

I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but densely packed explosive bombs and missiles and warheads tend to be pretty heavy.

… the entire problem with purely onboard solar powered vehicles of any kind is that they have to be absurdly lightweight, flimsy.

That isn’t practical.

It might be purely efficient, in a sense, but it isn’t very useful.

Being able to actually move stuff, that is practical.

Most transportation modes involve the ability to haul stuff.

You know, do work, aka the capacity to make stuff move.

You picking a fight that makes no sense to pick.

You can have solar and batteries be more stationary, and use microwaves to power things that are more mobile, this post is literally the proof of that concept… you can charge a battery with a any kind of power source.

Look heres another massive potential application of this, if you science fiction extend the accuracy/capability of this:

Plop a bunch of solar panels/batteries in the L1 point between the Earth and the sun.

Now, via a set of satellites in something like concentric orbits, you can get absurd amounts of power, beam it back along chains of satellites, snd then beam it to recieving stations on Earth. Or the Moon. Or orbital infrastructure.

Microwave transmission power loss will be waaaay less in space, because there’s no atmosphere.

Same with solar panel efficiency!

Solar Power + Microwave Transmission = Very Good, Actually.

Holy shit.

Getting the ability to remote charge things via microwave… that are moving?

That’s been basically sci fi nonsense, at a practical level, for a long time.

Anybody remember the Microwave Power stations in SimCity 2000?

If you could actually get this tech working, it has an incredible number of potential applications.

You can have solar panels and batteries on the ground, and use them to charge the microwave emitter, which can then charge the aircraft, which now does not need to carry solar panels and as much batteries, and thus has increased payload / range.

Now if you mount a DShK or Kord on this thing, it might be the most glorious technical of all time.

The most authentic battle bus in human history, lol.

The Afghan version of the Bob Semple ‘tank’ hahah!

Presumably the superstructure would be strongest at the area the main rotor used to be mounted, could probably put it there.

DREDD (2012)

The more modern Judge Dredd movie.

Mainly features Karl Urban’s chin, as Judge Dredd.

He never takes off the helmet. Before Hollywood had even discovered Pedro Pascal / Mando.

Its essentially a near perfect action movie.

Not really meaningful commentary on society, arguably is copaganda…

… but it is a very competent ‘dumb’ action movie, punctuated with extreme violence and one-liner quips, actually does have decent characters and even some character development!

sigh

Time to retrieve the nozzle.

Oh so we are mass producing punchable faces now eh?

Having just one wasn’t enough, Sam?

Hope the next molotov finds its mark.

… Has anyone attempted to turn an old android smart phone into a router?

Yeah, ding ding ding, this answer.

I know you’re joking, but I’m not.

No no no.

Not her.

Not Margot Robie.

… Her.

Olivia Thrilby.

It’s only fitting for her to get a movie where she’s the one behind a helmet this time.

Tell me she would not be a perfect fit as Samus.

You can’t.

Uh, given the recent spate of … Nintendo movies… and fantasy shows… and the fact that Link is a silent protagonist (aside of basically grunts and exclamations of various emotional tones)…

I really don’t see any possible way this could be good.

Brought to you by the director of ‘Maze Runner’, which currently has ~66% critic and user review score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Oh no!

I will continue not paying a dime for any media I see ever, unless I really support the creators, as I have been doing for … 20 years now?

The strategy to fuck with a class action lawsuit is to fuck with the lawyers leading the class action lawsuit.

… This is how you get another class action lawsuit, which is comprised entirely of lawyers.

Jesus Fucking Christ, these people are idiots.

When you live in a police/surveillance state, you’re a fool to fear criminals more than the government.

My comment got more updoots, but you deserve just as many.

My guess?

NSA is currently figuring out how to insert backdoors into all these things.

You see, the last backdoor they used all the time, well… people figured it out.

So, they had to ban uh, checks notes, apparently all routers, basically.

So, now they need a new backdoor into literally everything.

Hey there yah go haha, maybe for if he gets a new bro or sis at some point =P