Falling firmly under the fascinating science category of ‘What if…?’ comes the idea of powering airplanes with beamed microwaves. Although the idea isn’t crazy by itself, since we can even keep airplanes flying using just solar power (though with no real useful payload), running through the numbers as [Ian McKay] does in a recent article in IEEE Spectrum makes it clear that there are still some major hurdles if we want to make such a technology reality. Yet is beamed microwave power that much more far out than other alternative ways to power aviation?
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://hackaday.com/2024/06/27/powering-airplane-with-microwaves-an-aviation-physics-challenge-amidst-many/