Welcome! This is the Elara Labs research documentation. It is an Obsidian vault that contains our work, all open-sourced. You can run this locally by downloading the Obsidian software, and opening it as a vault. It is also viewable online on the Elara Labs documentation website.
Note: Be aware that since this vault uses a lot of Excalidraw drawings, you need to install the Obsidian Excalidraw plugin to be able to edit them (although it is not required if you just want to view them).
Important information for Project Elara researchers: Pages in this markdown vault should be archived when developed to a level of sufficient detail and completeness to be ported directly to the Elara Handbook, Project Elara’s primary source of documentation. Please see this Codeberg issue for more information.
Calculations
- Solar availability at geostationary orbit
- Ideal laser beam divergence
- Calculation of a hypothetical astrophysical-like artificial maser
- Calculation of free electron maser parameters
- Calculation of material stress under de-pressurization
- Obtaining magnetic field strength (no longer updated)
- Vacuum tube Lorentz factor calculation
- Computing the theoretical minimum divergence beam
- Solving for the fields in a hollow waveguide
- Free-electron maser efficiency calculations
- Combined system efficiency calculations
Topic guides
- Free-electron maser physics
- Rectenna and antenna physics
- Guide to modelling lasers and masers (includes free-electron lasers/ masers)
- Solving Maxwell equations with Fourier transforms
- Guide to multivariable and vector calculus
- Guide to partial differential equations
- Guide to common integration techniques
- Principles of synthetic apertures (no longer updated)
- Principles of coherent beam synthesis
- Space Robotics Development Guide
Literature reviews
Engineering/designs
- Spacecraft engineering
- Spacecraft heat shielding for free-electron maser
- Parabolic reflector engineering
- Solar mirror engineering
- Satellite maser engineering
- Thermocathode design for electron gun
- A realistic space-based prototype
- Space mission planning
- Project Elara Safety Review and Precautions
- A revised concept for improving transmission efficiency (no longer updated)
- Wild engineering ideas
- Hydrogen production as reserve fuel
Computational work and simulations
- FEniCS setup instructions for FEM
- Vectorized numerical quadrature
- Monte-Carlo numerical quadrature
- RF cavity simulation with aperture
- Electron gun simulation notes (no longer updated)
- Elara libraries implementation notes
- Numerical modelling of electron beams
- Numerical simulations for magnetostatics
Prototyping and experimental testing
- Prototype free-electron maser design
- Test build of a free-electron maser
- Experimental test of synthetic apertures (no longer updated)
- Procedure for testing synthetic apertures (no longer updated)
- Procedure for testing coherent beam synthesis
- Project Elara first light design (no longer updated)
Helpful resources
Guidelines
- AI use policy for Elara research docs
- Financial sustainability
- Open source knowledge
- Technical writing guidelines
- 3D CAD model guidelines