6 ms·
> 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
by 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...