Originally Posted by
airmotive
How about directed energy beams?
Instead of aircraft being burdened with carrying their energy source onboard, planes fly along prescribed routes populated with ground-based energy beam stations that continually shoot the planes with directed energy beams (insert magical process here) providing thrust and onboard power.
Similar to current-day VORTAC stations and published airways.
This! I get that batteries and synthetic jet-a and similar are going to be the next step. But surely we should also be thinking about inventing the next technology that will completely revolutionize traveling, in the same way that the internal combustion engine did to enable the car, or the jet engine did for planes?
If we are going to dream, let's dream big! Even heavier-than-air flight was once thought to be a magic process, now thousands of aircraft take to the sky each day.
Bring on the energy beams I say!