Skylight Space
Aviation & Aerospace - Seattle, Washington, United States
Skylight Space Employees
Skylight Space Senior Management
Skylight Space Details
Replacing combustion in energy and transport with sustainable electricity is an environmental imperative. If, as a replacement scales, it becomes price competitive with combustion, then that's good for business and for the environment … and it will happen. Air transport and ocean freight lack such replacements. Electricity generated in orbit and beamed via laser to airliners and cargo ships can scale to replace combustion, particularly with grid storage absorbing excess supply. That's Skylight.Skylight Space was formed in 2018 to investigate the technical and commercial feasibility of the Skylight concept. Skylight Space is now engaged in designing and prototyping a small number of innovations that enhance Skylight's feasibility.Skylight isn't a brand new idea. Well-designed proposals to power airliners using lasers projected from orbit date at least as far back as 1978. (Hertzberg A, et al., "A Laser Powered Flight Transportation System") However, recent technology advances make the air transport application much more credible. Further, servicing the demand-flexible markets of ocean freight and grid storage provide the scale needed to make the business case.There are several directions from which to approach Skylight. Each of the articles published through this page starts from one direction and leads to the others. A general starting point is The Skylight System, which can be accessed by pressing the Learn More button.
