1°C for long-life operation. Also, individual diode laser arrays can be coupled together to form one large phase-locked transmission operature, thus avoiding the large transmission mirror usually required for power beaming. Supported by a solar-electric or a nuclear-electric primary power source, diode lasers could be the most efficient and low mass transmitter of any of the power station options being considered. The design for the nuclear electric diode laser orbital power station is shown in Fig. 2. 2.3. Oscillator/Amplifier Laser Systems The discussion so far has implied that only laser oscillators are being considered; however, both solar-pumped and electrically-powered oscillator/amplifier combinations are also being investigated. An artist's conception of a direct solar-pumped iodide amplifier is shown in Fig. 3. This system has operated in the pulsed mode pumped by a continuous solar simulator. Early experiments achieved power amplification of better than 2% per centimetre. Research on scaling a flowing gas laser amplifier excited by continuous pumping is underway. Fig. 4 illustrates a diode laser amplifier concept designed for transmitting a megawatt of laser power. Although such systems are far from realization now, a small traveling wave amplifier with an injection laser has produced a few watts of coherent amplified power [5]. 3. Applications A variety of missions, ranging from a near-Earth space station to a manned planetary rover, could be made simpler and lighter if transmitted laser power were available. The simplicity would come from not having to carry a massive primary power system on every spacecraft. Power generation on these missions would be less massive because remotely generated, beamed power can offer economy of mass in orbit.
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