KENT, WA–(Marketwire – June 15, 2010) – LaserMotive, an independent R&D company specializing in laser power beaming and winner of the 2009 NASA-sponsored Power Beaming Competition, has announced its newest sponsors for its entry in the 2010 Space Elevator Games. At stake is a purse prize of up to $1.1 million.

Sponsors announced today include Zaber Technologies, a manufacturer of computer-controlled linear actuators, stages, mirror mounts, motors and other devices; Ophir Spiricon, a global leader in precision IR optics components and laser measurement equipment; and National Instruments, pioneers of virtual instrumentation for the measurement and automation industry. All three companies join LaserMotive’s growing list of corporate sponsors, including industry notables such as Boeing and DILAS, for its 2010 entry in the NASA Centennial Challenge Power Beaming Competition, also known as the Space Elevator Games. LaserMotive won a purse prize of nearly $1 million in the 2009 Competition, marking the first time a company had won since the Competition’s inception.

“We’re pleased to announce these industry partners as sponsors of Team LaserMotive as we prepare to enter the next round of the Power Beaming Competition in 2010,” said Tom Nugent, president and co-founder of LaserMotive. “Laser power beaming — the wireless transfer of energy from one location to another using laser light — offers tremendous potential to businesses in a wide variety of industries, ranging from alternative energy to unmanned aerial vehicles. Not only do we believe that the sponsorships will enhance the development of our entry for this year’s Competition, but the technology developed can be used to further practical applications for laser power beaming, both near and long term.” In May 2010, LaserMotive announced its blueprint for creating the first endless power system for unmanned aerial vehicles, based on technology LaserMotive developed for its winning entry in the 2009 Power Beaming Competition.

Headquartered in Kent, Wash., LaserMotive is a privately-held R&D company specializing in laser power beaming for commercial applications. The company was co-founded in 2006 by Dr. Jordin Kare, one of the foremost experts on laser propulsion, and Tom Nugent, former Research Director for LiftPort Group. Its industry partners include some of the leading companies in aerospace and lasers, including The Boeing Company, DILAS, MS Kennedy, 4D Optical, and In-Tec. For more information, please visit the company website at www.lasermotive.com.

It may be hard to see in the photo, but we were actually on a slightly elevated area, so we could point down at a target 1km away, which also had forest in the distance. All of the visible land is owned by Silver Springs, and we were pointed well below the horizon, so happily we were able to safely conduct high power, long range laser tests.

We want to thank Greg and everyone at Silver Springs for all of the support!

We wanted to do some test climbs to a higher altitude than the ~18 feet we can get in our shop, and luckily the flagship REI store was excited to let us use their climbing tower. Normally it’s for human rock climbers, but heck, a climber’s a climber, so we took our system, hung a cable from their #11 “beyond vertical” path, and shot up faster than any human has climbed that path!

Afterwards, a member of the REI staff presented our climber with an “I climbed the REI Pinnacle” certificate.

Here’s the certificate:

Thanks again to REI!

The guys from 4D Optical have a deep background in optical engineering, including some great expertise in long-distance beam alignment. They’ve been doing a great job helping us out with our optical alignment procedures as well as providing some extremely useful hardware, all of which has enabled us to redirect (as it were) our energy towards other high-priority tasks.

I’m not going to go into much detail of our system alignment procedure, but the first draft had 67 steps in it (!). Nick and Dave came up with some creative ways to enable more effective alignment, and we’re grateful to them for their expertise and hard work. Thanks, 4D Optical!

Early on, we tried making our own continuous loop cable, but the quality was not stellar, and the cable eventually wound up fraying and breaking. After much searching, we found a local company that still practiced the old art of making long splices in steel cable. As you can see, the results are pretty nice:

I’m told that the process is somewhat labor intensive, but the quality of the final product is great. We’ve got the pictured cable mounted on our big treadmill, and we’ve also made a much smaller treadmill that also has a Brion Toss cable on it.

Thank you to Brion Toss Yacht Riggers for their support of LaserMotive!