Beam propulsion is impractical for aviation due to weather effects and line of sight. It's more than an engineering challenge, it just won't work (except for maybe a few limited cases of very short range flight in clear conditions).
It's an absolutely huge engineering challenge, but at least it doesn't require a discovery worth of the Nobel prize in chemistry (which I guess much improved batteries would warrant).
Battery energy density is steadily improving every year. The 2019 Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to the inventors of the lithium ion battery.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/chemistry/2019/press-relea...