Free X Descending by Christian Lambright

the shock wave would have terrific benefits in addition to reducing drag. Reviewing a number of documents I have been able to find online, many from the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics (AIAA), and looking through the numerous references to previous works cited, it was clear that finding ways to modify shock waves and reduce thermal problems had been a subject of interest to scientists for years. However, until a paper published by Myrabo and Raizer in 1994, no one had demonstrated using pure energy to create the shock wave out in front of a moving body, let alone use the process to other advantages as well.
    Myrabo and Raizer’s paper, published by the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics and titled Laser Induced Air Spike for Advanced Transatmospheric Vehicle (AIAA 1994-2451), describes a “concept for a novel device”. It explains that “The principal function of an Air Spike is to replace the traditional sharp conical forebody normally proposed for streamlining an aerospaceplane”. In May of 1995, the Rensselaer Polytechnic Review published the first reports of a successful test of the Air Spike concept by stating, “In a major breakthrough, Rensselaer graduate students have successfully tested a revolutionary approach to aerospacecraft propulsion that may someday enable vehicles to ride an “energy beam highway” to space.” It was a profound statement, effectively removing any doubt that the concept was new in the scientific world.
    When I first learned of Myrabo’s visit to see Ray’s pictures I was only told that it had been “a couple of years ago”. I had not pressed for an exact date and so, for a long time afterward, I simply accepted that Myrabo had probably seen the images in Ray’s film—film of a disc-shaped vehicle with a forward pulsing beam of energy—sometime in 1993. Statements that were attributed to Myrabo himself had seemed to support that time frame. The May 15, 1995 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology 6 (AW&ST) published an article on Myrabo’s new concept in which it was reported that “Myrabo has been working on the Air Spike concept since 1993”. By 1994 his broader concept for producing an “Air Spike” using laser or microwave energy was formulated and published and, by early 1995, the first successful test had been performed.
    Years later, I was given a copy of a letter Ray had received from Myrabo a few weeks after his visit. It became clear that my estimate of when Myrabo had seen the pictures was off by a few years. I realized that his visit had, in fact, coincided with a conference held in March of 1987 shortly after Ray had moved from Austin to Maryland. On March 18-20 of that year, Goddard Space Flight Center held a symposium under the title “Visions Of Tomorrow: A Focus On National Space Transportation Issues”. One of the final sections of the symposium proceedings was “The Far Future: Beyond The Horizon” and included a presentation on the performance analysis of a laser-powered shuttlecraft, a presentation co-authored by Leik Myrabo 7 .
    It was clear from looking at the sizeable amount of information I could find on Myrabo’s work that none of his earlier designs had ever included a beam of energy projected forward. At the end of the 1980’s his largest design was the previously mentioned “Apollo Lightcraft”. The vehicle he had envisioned would receive its power from energy beamed to it, but this design was for a vehicle using laser or microwave energy for propulsion only . None of the designs showed any hint of a Directed Energy Air Spike (DEAS), as the air spike concept was now being called. Along with the forward projecting beam of energy, one other major aspect of the designs had changed—and changed drastically. None of his earlier Lightcraft designs had ever been of purely disc-shaped vehicles.
    Curiously, the term “Apollo” is still being used, but now with a different connotation. As his designs for