An Invitation To Tokyo

Ben Rosenberg is going to Tokyo, where he'll be the guest of the Tokyo Institute of Technology. The reason? Ben, who turned 15 on Sunday, has come up with a new way to propel paper airplanes into the ether. His experiments could change the very way both aircraft and spaceships get to where they're going.

The Hilton Head Island Packet reports, toward the end of his stay, Rosenberg will present a paper about his work to a group of scientists at the second International Conference on Beamed Energy Propulsion in Sendai, Japan. That's pretty heady stuff for a 15-year old.

Rosenberg will work side-by-side with Takashi Yabe, a professor and chief of laser research at the Tokyo Institute. He's has never invited a high school student to work with him before, saying this was also the first time the Japanese government has paid the expenses of a high school student to work as a researcher.

"He is brilliant and active," Yabe said of Rosenberg. "He will be a good scientist."

Rosenberg said studying beamed energy propulsion is a big deal because, not too far down the road, lasers, rather than traditional fuel probably will be used to fly airplanes and launch spacecraft into orbit. And, he said, it will be a lot cheaper. Traditional fuel and current methods cost about $50,000 to lift 1 kilogram -- about 2.2 pounds -- off the ground. With lasers, the same lifting will cost just 8 cents, Rosenberg said.

Where was this kid when I needed help in high school algebra? Oh, yeah. He wasn't born yet.

In his first experiments, Rosenberg used a laser to move a pendulum. He attached a small target made of photographic paper to the pendulum. He covered the target with liquid, choosing water, canola oil or methanol. Then, he fired a laser at the target.

The laser moved through the liquid and plastic coating on the target to the paper. It heated the paper, causing it to explode. The explosion forced the plastic layer and liquid back toward the laser, and the force of the liquid and plastic moving backward propelled the pendulum forward.

Where'd they get this kid? He's only 15?

Where's this kid heading? "Science and math are things I'm good at, " he said, "but I'd rather be doing art. Maybe I'll do something like architecture and combine them all," he said.

There's always aerospace design. Are you folks at Scaled Composites listening?

FMI: www.titech.ac.jp/home.html