Fig. 2. Dependence of gain on reservoir pressure ratio for apparatus shown in Fig. 1 (without He). Figure 2 shows the measured and estimated results of this configuration. Owing to the low power DC equipment (handmade), small signal gains obtained are in the limited range, as compared with high mass flux of laser medium. These results, however, are obtained without deactivative catalyst He (or H2O), and it is clarified that high performance can be expected with this improved scheme of supersonic CO2 mixing EDL. LASER PROPULSION BY CO2 LASER Employing the advanced scheme of CO2 above-mentioned laser, it can be expected that total electrical efficiency of the laser goes up to 10-15%. Figure 3 represents a block diagram of the closed cycle CO2 mixing EDL (tentatively high speed subsonic) for the early stage experiment of laser propulsion in space. If the CO2 laser power required for the experiment is considered to be 3 kW (1), the total mass flux pumped by a turbocompressor may be 150 g/s, the discharged power density in N2 flow becomes about 200 J/g, and total power supplied by solar cells array is above 30 kW. According to the concept of laser propulsion experiment in Ref. (1), in which the distance of the subsatellite from the space station is ranged within 100 km, and if the tracking resolution (2) is assumed to be 0.01 mrad, the diam of Cassegrain transmitter on the space station shown in Fig. 4 becomes 2 m. The diffraction limited angle is 5 jurad, and the diam of the receiver mirror on the subsatellite becomes less
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