4 ms·
Referenced: cost of firing a laser is $1 of gasoline run through a generator. That's roughly a liter. Let's say raw energy content is 32MJ/L, and we have gasol
by dsr_ 3y ago
Referenced: cost of firing a laser is $1 of gasoline run through a generator. That's roughly a liter.
Let's say raw energy content is 32MJ/L, and we have gasoline=>electricity losses of 50% and laser efficiency of 30%, so we expect a little more than 5MJ per shot.
If you can hit a 2m target moving at 5Km/s through 1000Km of space and atmosphere with 5MJ, how much energy can you put on a 1m target moving at 7m/s at a range of 500Km?
The difficulty in killing people from space will be targeting, and the limited availability of fuel and oxidator in space.
- AstralStorm 3y agoEven more so, limited availability of cooling. Overheated laser melts rather than firing, so it will likely need active cooling droplet heatsink for fast refire in case it does miss or enemy fires more than one missile, and that's a limited resource.
- arijun 3y ago> limited availability of fuel and oxidator in space And don’t forget—-you have to fly up Tory Bruno each time to fire it. But as a platform for assassination, it doesn’t seem so far fetched. The two main things I can think of that would make it difficult would be the much higher attenuation and scattering from the atmosphere, and the need for a different (telescope based?) target acquisition method.
- jjtheblunt 3y agowould the atmosphere along the beam path vaporize in short order at those power levels, so scattering/attenuation is temporary for a fixed beam?
- nine_k 3y agoIf it does so, the resulting plasma will very actively absorb the laser pulse's energy. Your best bet is not interacting with the atmosphere in any way, and merely adjusting for refraction.
- akiselev 3y agoMaybe, maybe not; self focusing [1] is an active area of research. Optics is one area where secret projects have been shown to be way ahead of what is publicly available [2] so I wouldn't be surprised if they've figured out some scifi way of making orbital lasers more effective. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-focusing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-focusing [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_Office_space_telescope_donation_to_NASA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_National_Reconnaissance_O...
- pdonis 3y agoSo basically the system from the movie Real Genius?
- ShadowBanThis01 3y agoExactly what I think of, every time. Now off to make some popcorn...
- ikekkdcjkfke 3y agoWhat about a huge sun lens in space to concentrate the sun rays