> Non-starter. The whole point of ordinance is its cheap. What's wrong with ye olde ground based x-ray laser and a mirror on a satellite? Mostly the fact that

> Non-starter. The whole point of ordinance is its cheap. What's wrong with ye olde ground based x-ray laser and a mirror on a satellite? Mostly the fact that 1. as someone mentioned already, x-ray lasers are not easy to generate, with designs sometimes using nukes to pump them [see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur ]; 2. while x-rays can be reflected, x-ray mirrors don't behave like optical mirrors because the wavelength of an x-ray is in the same ballpark as the size of atoms (10 nm to 0.1 nm, with atomic radii being in the 0.1-0.01 nm range), and they only reflect 100% of incident radiation when it hits them at very shallow angles ("For gold at 1 keV, the critical reflection angle is 2.4 degrees") [see https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/128247/how-would-an-x-ray-mirror-work https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/128247/how-would... http://henke.lbl.gov/optical_constants/ http://henke.lbl.gov/optical_constants/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_optics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_optics ]. When talking about lasers pumping out enough energy to be usable as weapons over distances of hundreds of kilometers - to bounce them off a satellite - you will need a mirror that can reflect that ray almost perfectly, or you'll just blast your own satellite out of the sky. And to do that, that mirror will only be able to reflect your ray at a shallow angle, which pretty much rules out bouncing an X-ray off it (unless your target is in orbit or, I suppose, if you have a fleet of such satellites, and coordinated enough to bounce the ray down 2° at a time). [Also see http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent.php http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunconvent... , C-s for "X-ray" and "grazing", but that whole website is a goldmine]