Quote:Seattle, Washington-based aviation technology company Electric Sky has announced a significant breakthrough involving its Whisper Beam power beaming technology.

Funded by the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Whisper Beam is designed to send power wirelessly to vehicles while in flight using only radio waves. Once commercially available, Whisper Beam will be perfectly poised to herald a dramatic shift in how passenger aircraft, flying taxis, drones, and satellites carry and consume the energy that keeps them aloft.

Air Travel Has Changed Very Little in Decades

In an interview with The Debrief, Electric Sky’s CEO and co-founder Robert Millman explained how he and his partner Jeff Greason first stumbled upon the idea of using power beaming to send energy to vehicles while they are in flight as opposed to aircraft needing to bring along all of their fuel with them.

“People today fly at the same speeds their great grandparents flew at,” Millman explained. “In fact, airliners today fly slightly slower than airliners in the 1960s and 1970s.”

The primary limiting factor, he noted, was the need for vehicles to carry all of the fuel they need with them on board in the form of antiquated fossil fuels. And while ground vehicles have finally begun their electric revolution in the last 25 years or so, the dawn of electric flight has yet to take off.

“Electricity is the perfect form of energy in many ways except one; it does not store very well,” said Millman of the primary factor limiting electric flight. “Fossil fuels, on the other hand, are the worst form of energy in many ways except one; they store very well.”

Unfortunately, storage is a huge part of the issue, as current electric aircraft prototypes must fly overly laden with heavy batteries. The limited storage offered by even the most advanced batteries severely limits flight times to mere fractions of those enjoyed by traditional aircraft.

This roadblock has hampered the advancement of electric aircraft and is still the major roadblock in electric vehicles taking flight in any measurable way.

However, Millman says, times are rapidly changing, and technology like power beaming can break that equation, potentially ushering in a whole new era of electrically powered aviation.

Power Beaming for Whisper Beam Built on Established Physics

“The concern we have is flight technology has not advanced very much in the last several decades,” Millman told The Debrief. “So, we were looking to probe known physics and come up with better approaches. And this project, Whisper Beam, is an outcome of that.”

Although the concept sounds right out of science fiction, Millman notes that the idea of power beaming is built upon well-established principles of physics. In fact, he says it was his partner Jeff Greason who, in 2017, noted the solid scientific foundation that radio wave power beaming was built upon regardless of its out-there reputation.

“As much as wireless transmission gets dismissed as fringe, if you look at first principles, it is the right way to go, or at least should be seriously explored,” Millman recalls Greason saying. “The physics of it are pretty well known.”

In short, the technology involves using radio waves to send electric power to an aircraft that is equipped with a specialized receiving antenna, or “rectenna” as Millman called it, that can take that wireless radio wave and turn it into usable electricity. It is a surprisingly simple concept, but even Millman admits that taking something like power beaming from concept to execution with the goal of heralding a major paradigm shift in the way aircraft fly is no small task, regardless of how straightforward it may appear to be.

“We started in earnest in the 2017 timeframe, and we knew we were taking on some rather ambitious things,” Millman told The Debrief. “Let’s just say that changing the nature of flight is no small thing.”



The Type of Power Beam makes All of the Difference

As a first step, Millman and Greason looked at the main existing technology used to send power through the air wirelessly. Known as a Gaussian beam, that technology has a number of significant limitations that make it ill-suited for power beaming to distant aircraft.

First and foremost, Gaussian beams lose power as they go, meaning the farther away an aircraft is from the power station sending it energy, the weaker the beam. This also means that the power generation platform would lose way more energy than ever reaches the aircraft. That would defeat one of the key benefits of power beaming, namely energy efficiency.

Another limiting factor is the dangers associated with Gaussian beams. Specifically, anything that flies between the emitter array and the receiving aircraft would be bombarded with massive amounts of electromagnetic energy. This means that birds, drones, and even other aircraft would be at significant risk every time they fly over a power transfer beam. Combined with the power loss experienced by these types of power beams and the massive amounts of energy required to compensate for that power loss to adequately fuel an aircraft in flight, a Gaussian beam would represent a costly, immediate danger to anything that crosses its path.

“You want to put high power on the vehicle without putting high power on everything in between,” Millman explained. Fortunately, he says, there are types of wireless radio wave beams, known as non-Gaussian beams, that can be custom-shaped so the peak power is at the aircraft and the space between the transmitter and aircraft is a low power zone.

“The way this beam works, it is actually the lowest power directly between the transmitter and the receiver,” Millman told The Debrief.

Of course, he notes, no commercial applications of power beaming with non-Gaussian beams currently exist, but the base technology itself has been around for decades.

“The major issues have been worked out,” Millman said. “The engineering issues, how to turn this into a practical application. Let’s say that there are many solved problems that have been solved over the last 4 or 5 decades, so it’s not like we are solving new stuff.”

For Whisper Beam, Millman says the next practical steps are what he and his team are undertaking now, mainly reducing the non-Gaussian radio wave emitters to a lightweight transmission system that can send the power directly to an aircraft in flight.

“These are all things that have been done, either in the world of radio or wireless communication, that we will apply to our wireless power transmission,” Millman explained. “It’s a mound of work that we look forward to going through.”

Whisper Beam Making Huge Strides Toward Taking Flight

After years of preparation and design, Millman and Greason started to test their ideas in simulation software designed to simulate radio waves and their behaviors. This involved designing and simulating different methods of shaping the non-Gaussian power beams so that they are at their strongest when they reach the aircraft and, conversely, are at their weakest between the emitter array and the receiving aircraft. That work, which Millman notes took them years to complete, was a success.
After that milestone, the duo took the next step of trying to build a proof-of-concept system. The result was their first successful laboratory test in January of 2023.

In that experiment, Millman and Greason and their third team member, technician Tim James, built a customized power-beaming station that features 16 radio wave emitters in a circular array, kind of like a satellite dish array. Then, using the concepts derived from their simulations, this custom power beaming station was able to shape the radio waves, so their peak power not only coalesced at the desired spot but, in this case, was enough to light up a light bulb that had been placed about 3 meters above the transmission array.

“All of the computer simulations predict this is how the waves will behave, but we still wanted to build something physical and then measure them physically to prove that the physical waves are matching the simulations,” Millman told The Debrief. “And they do!”

How Whisper Beam Could Revolutionize Commercial Flight

Throughout the interview, Millman repeatedly emphasized how the higher a plane flies, the more efficient flight can be. For example, a commercial airliner typically cruises between 30 thousand and 40 thousand feet of altitude. This limitation exists in no small part because internal combustion engines need air to generate thrust. Unfortunately for these types of engines, the higher an aircraft goes, the thinner the air they need to create thrust becomes.

The ideal situation, says Millman, is an aircraft that can fly as much as twice as high as current aircraft where the air is thin, allowing for much more efficient travel, especially on long flights. Electric-powered aircraft can do exactly that, allowing for a dramatic reduction in flight times. Still, as previously noted, the types of battery-powered electric vehicles that can take advantage of the thinner atmosphere and lower drag at higher altitudes to reduce flight times have limited power storage. But an electric aircraft that receives power via Whisper Beam doesn’t suffer from this limitation.

“When we take our array designs and transfer them into computer simulations, we can easily transfer power to vehicles flying at 70, 80, 90 thousand feet,” said Millman.

This ability to take advantage of the benefits of high-altitude flight AND electric flight at the same time is the primary driving force behind Electric Sky. It is a goal that attracted DARPA to the program and is one Millman and Greason believe is finally within striking distance.

“If you could pay the same price as a sub-sonic airline but arrive in a quarter of the time, then clearly that’s a better approach,” Millman told The Debrief. “And with zero emissions along the way.”

Emerging Markets May Include Air Taxis or Even Sending Power to Outer Space

Following the success of their light bulb experiments in January, Millman and Greason say they have some attainable, yet admittedly ambitious, goals. One such target is the burgeoning industry of drone-style people carriers, often called air taxis or flying cars.

DARPA wireless powered airplane

Quote:DARPA wants to recharge drones mid-flight with a ‘whisper beam’ of energy (Dec 2021)

"Wireless power transfer provides a potential breakthrough capability."

Have you ever needed to recharge your phone but you’re sitting just a little bit too far from a power outlet? The Department of Defense feels your pain, which is why it put $225,000 into researching how to recharge electric aircraft while they are still in flight.

Called “Whisper Beam,” the budding technology would let electric aerial vehicles “draw kilowatts of power in all weather,” wrote the developer, Electric Sky, Inc., in a press release.

Electric Sky CEO Robert Millman cautioned that DARPA’s interest in Whisper Beam is in the early stages, and the exact military applications of the technology, if any, are yet to be determined. Still, if the technology works and if the military finds use for Whisper Beam, it could be a boon for infantry troops or special operations forces.

For example, the military hopes to use small, affordable drones as eyes in the sky to give service members better intelligence on what’s happening around them, and Whisper Beam could potentially keep those drones flying for longer without interruption.

“Energy is a fundamental currency in the modern battlespace,” Air Force Lt. Col. Paul Calhoun, program manager for this project at DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, told Task & Purpose. “Developing a more flexible, adaptive, resilient energy ‘web’ by leveraging wireless power transfer provides a potential breakthrough capability for national defense.”

Many military experts are already urging the wide-scale adoption of small reconnaissance drones by ground troops, and developing swarm tactics in large-scale demonstrations. They can provide special operations forces “with a decisive tactical advantage over their adversaries, providing overhead battlespace awareness while manned aerial assets are at standoff distances,” wrote Air Force Capt. Dick Yount in an article for Air University in July [Wild Blue Yonder, eyes in the sky]. “The sooner [Special Operations Command] can regularly field [those drones] the better.”

Of course, a drone is only as useful as its power supply. And if you think it’s inconvenient to have to stand up to plug your phone in, imagine if you’re deep behind enemy lines and your drone dies right when you need to know if there’s an enemy fighter waiting for you around the corner. That’s where Whisper Beam could prove useful. According to the press release, the technology would amplify power the way a whispering gallery amplifies sound.

“Whisper Beam technology is the electromagnetic equivalent of a whispering gallery,” said Millman, CEO of Electric Sky. “In a whispering gallery a single listener across the room can hear the speaker but no one else can, not even people standing directly between the speaker and listener. The sound is too weak for them to hear.” 

Just the same, with Whisper Beam, radio waves would self-focus power at the receiver, but the waves would be weak everywhere else, the press release explained. That means no, unfortunately you won’t be able to throw your phone between the transmitter and the drone in hopes of stealing a few more minutes of battery life.

....

“There are a lot of reasons why the military is interested in electric aircraft, but the military also has a lot of specific requirements, so we don’t want to get too far ahead of our skis,” Millman said.

If we did lean a bit far over the edge, we could see some great opportunities for quieter engine technology. In his 2021 paper, Cap. Dick Yount laid out a scenario where special operators are trying to capture “a weapons facilitator and financier for a violent extremist organization in West Africa.”

The operators have a good idea of where the financier is, but they do not want to bring in larger aircraft like the Reaper or AC-130J gunship for fear of spooking the individual with their loud engine noise, Yount imagined. That, plus low cloud ceilings passing through the target area, severely limits the operators’ “battlespace picture,” Yount wrote, allowing an undetected enemy force to move in and counter friendly troops.

Given 20 years of special operations-centric warfare, enemies of the U.S. “have become savvy to many of our tactics, techniques, and procedures,” Yount explained. “Simply put, if there are airplanes overhead, it’s time to lay low.”

But if you have a small group of quiet, affordable drones, that might give operators the intelligence they need to accomplish the mission. Even today, Army infantry grunts are flying drones to scout objectives for their squads. One of those drones, the Black Hornet Nano, is so small it fits in your hand. According to the manufacturer, the Black Hornet has a flight time of just 25 minutes. Maybe with the Whisper Beam, it could fly a lot longer.

“It’s a myth that long-distance power transmission is impossible, it’s just never been economical,” Whisper-Beam inventor Jeff Greason said. “This new method reduces the cost of the ground transmitter and the size of the vehicle’s onboard receiver.”



In particular, Whisper Beam could help recharge drones after power-hungry phases like take off and climb, which would enable vehicle designers “to meet other requirements to extend range, enhance flight safety, reduce peak loads on batteries, and shorten ground turnaround times,” Greason said.

Even today, Air Force mission planners make similar calculations to try to get heavily-loaded aircraft off the ground and then refueled as soon as possible.

“Sometimes Air Force takeoff weight is a constraining factor on what they can do,” Millman said. “Sometimes they overload aircraft and underload fuel just so they can take off.”

The more range the better, because if there’s anything that the last 20 years of the Global War on Terror have proved, it’s that the longer you have eyes in the sky, the more useful those eyes are.

“With the addition of [remotely piloted aircraft] to the field, SOF teams now rely on constant [intelligence, surveillance reconnaissance] in preparing and executing missions,” wrote Air Force Capt. Jordan Kowalski in a 2017 paper for Air University.

If it is successful, Whisper Beam could have applications beyond the drone world. Greason noted that any electric aircraft can draw power while in flight, so it stands to reason that even manned electric aircraft might benefit from the technology. While most of the Air Force fleet is powered by fossil fuels, the service is looking into manned electric aircraft as part of its Agility Prime program, where the branch hopes to develop manned electric ‘air cars’ capable of vertical takeoff and landing. 

“Possible uses for such aircraft include disaster relief, firefighting, search and rescue, humanitarian aid efforts, medical evacuation, logistics support, and personnel movement,” the Air Force wrote in a press release about Agility Prime.

Still, Millman cautioned that the first step is to test Whisper Beam out for DARPA, and then, based on the test, find out more about what missions DARPA is envisioning for the technology.

We can only hope that if Whisper Beam takes off, it will be renamed ‘Scotty.’ Then, at long last, the old Star Trek command ‘beam me up Scotty,’ can finally become a legitimate military order.

Quote:Rhonda Stevenson - Stevenson also heads the non-profit organization ─ Tau Zero Foundation ─ dedicated to pioneering advancements toward interstellar flight, focusing on the intermediate steps of advanced propulsion and energy storage for on orbit capabilities and beyond. She is the creator and host of the “Space Matters” show, a syndicated weekly digest of space industry activities and relevant conversations.

In 2013, Stevenson founded Blue Elysium Enterprises, which provided strategic executive consulting to technology companies. Earlier in her career, she was chief marketing and promotions officer at Deep Space Industries, and founder of Space Mining and Resources Coalition.

Quote:Military pilots and ground crews showing high rates of cancer, Pentagon study reveals
New Pentagon study on cancer confirmed what many aviators, family members suspected

By Maureen Mackey | Fox News

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U.S. Army’s WWII K-9 Corps was born on this day in history, March 13, 1942
America’s four-legged foot soldiers and sailors served with the Army, Navy, Marines and Coast Guard in WWII, earning acclaim in numerous roles, including front-line combat.
High rates of cancer among military pilots have been discovered by a Pentagon study.
And for the first time, it's been shown that ground crews that fuel, maintain and launch those aircraft are getting sick as well. 
The Pentagon released the study in early February, the Associated Press reported.
Retired military aviators had long sought the data, the AP said on Sunday, March 19.
BREAKTHROUGH BONE CANCER DRUG SLOWS TUMOR GROWTH, EXTENDS SURVIVAL IN EARLY STUDIES
The military aviators had raised alarms for years about the number of air and ground crew members they knew who had cancer. 
They were told that earlier military studies had found they were not at greater risk than the general U.S. population.

Navy A-6 Intruder pilot Jim Seaman died of cancer at age 61. He is one of a group of pilots who were diagnosed with cancer, the Associated Press reported. His widow Betty Seaman has been part of a large group of aviators and surviving spouses who have lobbied Congress and the Pentagon for years to look into the number of cancers aviators and ground crew face. (Betty Seaman via AP)
But in a yearlong study of almost 900,000 service members who flew on or worked on military aircraft between 1992 and 2017, the Pentagon found that air crew members had an 87% higher rate of melanoma and a 39% higher rate of thyroid cancer, as the AP reported.
Meanwhile, men had a 16% higher rate of prostate cancer and women a 16% higher rate of breast cancer. 
COULD A URINE TEST DETECT PANCREATIC AND PROSTATE CANCER? STUDY SHOWS 99% SUCCESS RATE
Overall, the air crews had a 24% higher rate of cancer of all types, according to the AP.
The study showed ground crews had a 19% higher rate of brain and nervous system cancers, a 15% higher rate of thyroid cancer and a 9% higher rate of kidney or renal cancers.

Quote:Overall, the air crews had a 24% higher rate of cancer of all types, the study found.

Women, meanwhile, had a 7% higher rate of breast cancer, the same study found. 
The overall rate for cancers of all types was 3% higher, the AP noted.
Navy A-6 Intruder pilot Jim Seaman was one of those who died of cancer at age 61. He passed away in 2018. 

Navy A-6 Intruder pilot Jim Seaman standing in front of his jet. He passed away from lung cancer at age 61 in 2018.  (Betty Seaman via AP)
He is among a group of pilots who were diagnosed with cancer, the Associated Press reported. 
His widow Betty Seaman has been part of a large group of aviators and surviving spouses who have lobbied Congress and the Pentagon for years to look into the number of cancers aviators and ground crew face.
The Pentagon acknowledged that the study had gaps that likely led to an undercount of cancer cases.
PANCREATIC CANCER RATES ARE RISING FASTER AMONG WOMEN THAN MEN: NEW STUDY
The military health system database used in the study did not have reliable cancer data until 1990 — so it may not have included pilots who flew early-generation jets in the prior decades.
Some good news, too
There was some good news, however, reported as well. 
Both ground and air crews had far lower rates of lung cancer, and air crews also had lower rates of bladder and colon cancers.

Navy A-6 Intruder pilot Jim Seaman leaning on the wing of his jet. Seaman is one person from a group of pilots who died of cancer. (Betty Seaman via AP)
After adjusting for age, sex and race, the data compared the service members with the U.S. general population.
The Pentagon said the new study was one of the largest and most comprehensive done to date. 
BREAST CANCER AND MAMMOGRAMS: EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE DISEASE, SCREENING AND MORE
An earlier study had looked at Air Force pilots only — and had found some higher rates of cancer, while this one looked across all services and at both air and ground crews.

Quote:The study was required by Congress as part of the 2021 defense bill. 

Even with the wider approach, the Pentagon cautioned that the actual number of cancer cases was likely to be even higher because of gaps in the data — which it said it would work to remedy.
BIOHACKING REVEALED: WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE HIP HEALTH TREND EMBRACED BY BROOK BURKE, TOM BRADY AND OTHERS 
The study was required by Congress in the 2021 defense bill, the AP noted.
Now, given that higher rates were found, the Pentagon must conduct an even bigger review to try to understand why crews are getting sick.

The Pentagon is seen from Air Force One in this file photo as it flies over Washington in March 2022. Now, given the results of the new study on cancer, the Pentagon must conduct an even bigger review to try to understand why crews are getting sick. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)
The Pentagon took pains to point out that the new study "does not imply that military service in air crew or ground crew occupations causes cancer, because there are multiple potential confounding factors that could not be controlled for in this analysis," such as family histories of cancer, smoking behavior or alcohol use.
Localized prostate cancer
Meanwhile, an entirely different study found that men diagnosed with localized prostate cancer who want to avoid immediate surgery or radiation can safely choose to actively monitor the disease as a treatment method.
That's according to a recent study released last week in the New England Journal of Medicine.
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Researchers in the study determined that most men shouldn't panic or rush to treatment decisions following a diagnosis, as the mortality rate from the cancer 15 years later was relatively low regardless of treatment approach.
The study began in the United Kingdom in 1999.
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It involved 2,664 men between the ages of 50 and 69 who were diagnosed with localized prostate cancer. 
Of those men, 1,643 were enrolled in a trial studying three different treatment methods — surgery to remove tumors (553), radiation (545), and active monitoring (545).