SCI-FI is fiction. Please say that again and again till it starts to sink in.
Except when it's not. The archangel's design is considered sound by scientists and has been discussed several times on nuclear science webboards. I've asked nuclear scientists outright if the archangel's defenses would work. The answer was a resounding 'yes', along with an explanation about the issue with reflective surfaces.
Yes, Masers can use wavelengths higher than visible light but if your going to use some sort of mirror to target your system then clearly you can use that type of mirror to reflect that energy at 99+% efficiency. At this point in time your talking about a hypothetical system so feel free to pick any part of the EM Spectrum and you can find it's going to be a pain to use as either you need to rapidly swivel your laser system or you going to lose a lot of energy as it passes though the air or you can use the same substance used in your mirrors to make a missile immune to said system.
We're discussing both systems, so it's only fair to mention both. Lasers have a faster targetting system than masers (due to the ability to reflect visible wavelengths), but masers are able to penetrate better due to higher wave lengths. Both have advantages/disadvantages that to be weighed in before deploying a system. A mirror on a high powered laser is doable, but has to be precision crafted to be able to take the load. Note that such a mirror is vastly different from a "reflective surface" on a missile. From here:
The optical power levels inside the laser devices themselves are so horrendously high that the high-reflectivity laser mirrors operate just on the verge of self-destruction. Any flaw or blemish or dust particle on the mirror surface causes the mirror reflectivity to decrease or its absorption to increase. As the absorbing spot gets warmer, its absorption goes up, and the situation goes to pot in a runaway fashion. The result is near-instantaneous catastrophic runaway thermal damage which blows the surface off the mirror faster than you can possibly shut things down. The supersonic nozzles are extremely fragile and touchy also.
While you can "use the same substance" as you suggest, it's doubtful that you could maintain the perfect mirror on the missile, or for that matter even acheive such a mirror.
You can't fire rail guns over the horizon as they a lose a lot of kinetic energy going tough the air and don't don't have ballistic trajectories unless there moving at slow speeds at which point you can just use gun powder to do that.
You obviously haven't seen the Raytheon specs on the new railguns. They fire a non-explosive, guided projectile straight up, then direct it to the target on the way down. Over the horizon is *EXACTLY* what it does, and it does it with a range of ~100 miles. (Or so the brochure says.:-)) Some links:
I cover my missiles with a reflective substance for 200$.
It doesn't work that way. Reflective sheets can deflect some of the energy, but they will still heat up from the remainder. When we're talking a multi-megawatt pulse, your reflective surface is as good as chicken fried toast. The novel Footfall had an interesting defense system that involved active water cooling near the skin of the ship, but that wouldn't work very well for missiles. In the case of Footfall's Archangel, the ship was only able to carry such a system because it was a heavily overpowered Orion warship. (It carried several space shuttles up into space with it.) Missiles don't have that kind of thrust-to-weight ratio.
Also, masers operate at wavelengths higher than visible light, so your reflective surfaces would be even less effective against those.
PS: You might be able to shoot down aircraft from several miles, but I can launch a missile while over the horizon and still hit you.
As I said in another post, lasers/masers would work best for point-defense and not long range fire. So we'll fire off a rail gun round over the horizon, it will destroy your pathetic ship, then the point defense lasers will take out your slow moving incoming missiles. Result? Total destruction to you and your offsensive capabilities, zero impact on our combat effectiveness. Game over, you lose.
More seriously, Tritum + Phosphor would do nicely without posing much of a health risk. The only catch is that Tritium cost $$$ for very small quantities. For something the size of a lightsaber, it's likely that the cost of the Tritium would be too high.
The original poster had the best idea. Filling clear plastic tubes with a phosphorescent solution would have given them all the effect they wanted, but without the inherent danger. Of course, Adobe After Effects would have been even cheaper and safer, but these guys were obviously amatuers.
I get to play with some reasonably high power lasers at work
Lucky you. Most people won't let me near the kitchen or power tools, much less a kilowatt or megawatt laser!;-)
The power densities that some lasers put out is greater than the power per unit area exiting the surface of the sun. This isn't a problem so long as nothing in the high power density region absorbs the wavelength of light that the laser is running at - as long as the optics are transparent the light goes in, gets bent around, and comes out the other side without causing any heating.
So, if you were to make a laser weapon for the military, what do you think would be the best solution for such issues? For example, would placing the optics deep inside a barrel that is hermetically sealed while not is use provide sufficient respite? Or are more extreme measures necessary?
Is this some parallel universe you live in? The definition of geek means that "getting laid" is restricted to chicken eggs. Maybe you should hand in your geek card right now?
You need to watch the movie. Knight takes them all to a pool where he managed to sneak in a bunch of girls from a nearby (girls only) beauty school. He told the guys something along the lines of "Gentlemen, here is your last chance to get laid!"
In the end, the weird guy who has a lab in the closet gets the girl because he wins the lottery, and the kid gets a geek girl who's a hyperactive insomniac. Great movie.:-)
In this case, it is the tool. Or more precisely, misusing the tool. The DVNS tech is designed for live action movies and thus does a poor job on drawn cartoons. The "correct" method for restoring cartoon film is to take apart each cell and restore the cell individually. This process is similar to colorizing a black and white movie, and produces results that can look better than the original film!
According to the article given by the first poster, they even have digital tools to speed up this process as well. Thus the only real excuse is "we don't want to spend the time or money". *shrug*
At first thought, it seems silly to put new cartoons through DVNR because they shouldn't be dirty, or so you'd think. Danny Antonucci, creator of Ed, Edd n Eddy, says that when negatives come back from Korea, they are so dirty that it's a necessity to run them through DVNR.
Yikes. From the sounds of it, you'd think they're processing the film in grass huts!
Ahh... so you're saying that because they're using "microlasers" to test the bomb triggers, they couldn't possibly be using lasers for anything else.
Nope. I'm saying that the page I linked to is a full description of what the stockpile program is doing. Their only mention of lasers is the use of triggers for Sprytons. Until someone produces a link or hard reference to the method in question (using fusion reactors to test weapons), then we have no evidence to suggest that the military is doing or wants to do such a thing.
Is that clear enough for you, or should I say it again?
Hello? That's the NIF! You've managed to go in full circle away from "the military wants this too" back to "the NIF is doing these experiments"! We already know that. What we need proven is that the military wants to test their hydrogen bombs with such reactors. So far no evidence has come forth to support that assertion.
Wireless is an industry term that refers to using radio transmissions for communicating with devices. e.g. AT&T refers to their cell service as "wireless service". Induction is not wireless because it doesn't transmit radio transmissions. It works through interferance with an EM field extended out only a few centimeters. The card must be inside the field to function, and cannot be activated from a greater distance with "a more powerful device" as some idiots insisted upon. Such attempts would would either burn out the device (too much juice), stand everyone's hair on end instantly, fry your ass with arcing energy, or all of the above.
The formal name is Thor which is nothing more than a cannister in space with a bunch of welding rolds with fins, some type of seeker head (I'd go with dual IR/millimeter wave radar, perhaps with an optical backup) dropped from orbit. A few hundred to a few thousand of those could ruin your whole day.
Orbital mechanics doesn't work like that. To hit anything, you'd have to deorbit the devices on a proper trajectory. Depending on your own orbit, such a trajectory could take a full orbit before it comes down. In that time, the battlegroup could have moved, thus making them a non-target. Compare this to the Naval mounted lasers which have a pure line of sight firing solution. (Well, almost. You do have to correct for atmospheric refraction.)
Basically, Thor is far more useful for hitting stationary targets than it is for hitting ships, thus making Naval vessels just as potent as ever.
Let me be the first to say that if they pull off this laser plan, the reward should be to surround them with a million [naked] women screaming and throwing tiny pickles at them.
1) If it's a concern, fill the space the reactor takes up with ammo, and only shoot as fast as often as the reactor is capable of delivering enough power (which wouldn't be constant). Your ammo will hold out longer than the reactor would before you have to go back and refit.
Large Naval vessels already have reactors capable of providing power for these weapons. The reactors can be ramped up to provide power to energy weapons at a rate exceeding that of conventional ammo. The limiting factor would be the energy weapon's duty cycle.
2) Maybe. I'm not sure that would be faster.
Far lot faster than lauching a point-defense missile. Besides, we've got super-fast mirrors from fiber-optics research that can squeeze off the shot before the machine guns can get off their first bullet. Keep in mind that a mirror can be kept spinning while a gun has to swivel with the target.
3) True, but only marginally important. Remember that "it takes up less space" argument is wrong - or at least has been wrong so far.
It's not about space. Well, except when we're talking missiles, but assume bullets and shells for the moment. In the case of a hit on a vessel, the magazine is a horribly vital area that can easily destroy the entire ship if hit. It's usually buried deep inside ships to prevent such damage, but secondary explosions and fires have been known to trigger such detonations.
4) This is definitely not in favor of the laser, and probably the biggest reason why we're not using them now. You basically have to haul a power station with the laser whereever you go.
This is NOT a problem on modern naval vessels. The Navy currently has the DD(X) and CVN(X) class ships up for energy weapon fittings. While the gas turbines of the DD(X) class might make it unsuitable (too much drain on the fuel supply), the CVN(X) class is perfect. It's already hauling around reactors that almost never run at 100% power, the new class decouples energy production from the drive shafts, and it carries around a ten year supply of fuel. What could be a more perfect setup?
A power station is much more difficult to keep up and running than a BFG,
Well, on carriers the power station has to be run one way or another. The BFG is usually kept on a separate boat all together (Battleships and Cruisers), the former of which has been fully retired.
Also, lasers have to be kept really, really clean. Dust is a problem.
Not having experience with high powered lasers (yeah, like anyone's going to let me near one with more than a few milliwatts of output), I can't really speak to this point. But my primary thought is: Wouldn't any dust particles get vaporized by the beam? How do the characteristics of this situation vary from lasers to masers?
If you've already got a power station handy, it might be useful as an auxillary weapon.
Point defense is probably the most useful situation for beam weapons, as they can't fire over the horizon. However, such weapons could also be useful for future space combat scenarios. i.e. Just like a battleship used to bombard land, a ship on the ocean could potentially bombard space targets. Retaliation would be the biggest concern (they can hit you just as easily as you can hit them), but the requirements that space ships be light (no reactor) works in the favor of Naval ships.
And it wouldn't be so much of an auxillary weapon (technically, everything on a carrier other than planes is auxillary) as it would be another weapon that has particular uses.:-)
Oooo! Oooo! Oooo! I think hydrogen bombs are a good idea! Because we're all going to *wish* we had more Russian super-nukes if a large asteroid comes a-knocking...
You're overlooking advantages of laser weapons though:
1. No ammo. As long as your reactors hold out, so can your weapons.
2. Point defense. When the enemy is swamping your vessel with missiles, lasers can be used to quickly target and destroy the incoming bogeys.
3. No magazine. There's no ammo, so there's nothing to make go "BOOM" in the case of a lucky shot.
4. Reliability. Since the computer only has to control a targetting mirror and not swivel a large hunk of metal, the reliabiity of the entire weapon goes up while maintenence goes down.
That being said, a gigawatt laser is probably not necessary, but it is doable for < 1 sec pulses of fire. No cold fusion required.:-)
Note that the same advantages hold true of masers which may prove to be more effective weapons in the long run.
That's my wifes favorite line, too.:-) My favorite part is anything "In defiance to you Kent...". If you've ever read LaMothe's "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", he' constantly dropping Real Genius references. Such as, "Without correcting for the polar vs. cartesian coordinates, the projection looks warped. Or in defiance to you Kent, it's like looking through a fishbowl!" Half the reason why it was such an awesome book!;-)
You'd think by now I'd remember to double check my facts instead of using my oft-fautly memory. Yes, they are terawatt lasers, but as you say they only fire for nanoseconds. In my defense, my confusion is remembered from trying to sort out the previous story's "facts".:-)
Riigghht. I'm not saying there isn't a reason for doing such a thing, I'm saying that the reasons stated make no sense. i.e. There's information missing somewhere here that would put the puzzle together. And you know what? I looked it up myself.
From this page, they are not using lasers for fusion tests as the anon poster suggested. Instead, they're using microlasers to do Spryton trigger tests. So no, nuclear scientists are not really, really stupid. Someone just has their facts out of whack (which happens).
If anyone *does* have a link to the military doing fusion testing with lasers, then by all means. Post a link!
That still doesn't make any sense. Why would you go through all the trouble of testing the dueterium/lithium samples in a reactor when they could just as easily do a purity test? And for that matter, why aren't they more concerned with the plutonium detonator, which *will* become useless?
Maybe you have more info that would help, but I just can't fathom why anyone would attempt to test a fusion bomb in this manner.
Ok, ok. I totally got this reference right away. Which maybe dates me a bit (I'm under 30).
A few people will usually get it. But the majority will say something amazingly stupid.
But what makes that movie (and that scene) so special?
Oh, come on! That's the ultimate 80's party movie for geeks! They pulled off all sorts of geeky pranks (dry ice in the hall, disassembling/reassembling a car in the dorm, tuning a radio to braces), saved the world through some pretty creative hacking/espionage, and even pulled an awesome prank on the bad guy! What's not to like?:-)
Group think. Meh, original scenes make group think happen because the group remembers them.
Ummm... no. Group Think refers to the Slashdot mentality of accepting the story spin at face value without checking the facts. A perfect example was the Chase Mastercard story from a day or two ago. The poster said "wireless", "RFID", and "insecure", thus ensuring that 95% of the posts were "This sucks and is insecure wireless crap that I can hack like this RFID hack (some pointless link here)!" The truth of the matter was that the card was not wireless (induction), not RFID (smartcard), and was not insecure (crypto chip). It was actually a marked improvement over the current cards! And yet, the last response to my rebuttals of such nonsense still had someone calling it wireless and insecure! Enough to make me want to drop-kick a few people...
Actually, the military does need a laser this powerful. You see, it will allow them to remove a tiny sample from any one of our nuclear warheads and induce fusion in line with exactly what happens when the bomb is dropped.
Why would they want to do that? Right now the equipment for a fusion reactor is massive, has to be carefully calibrated, and wouldn't really be effective for a bomb. In short, we're a LONG way from a pure fusion bomb. I can imagine that the military has a passive interest at the moment, but it's doubtful they'll take any more of an interest until the equipment is operating, proven, and many of the other issues have been worked out.
Honestly, this design would be far more useful for a Dadelus drive than it would be for a bomb.
Slashdot Mirror
SCI-FI is fiction. Please say that again and again till it starts to sink in.
:-)) Some links:
e s_062403.pdf s /8-6263.asp
Except when it's not. The archangel's design is considered sound by scientists and has been discussed several times on nuclear science webboards. I've asked nuclear scientists outright if the archangel's defenses would work. The answer was a resounding 'yes', along with an explanation about the issue with reflective surfaces.
Yes, Masers can use wavelengths higher than visible light but if your going to use some sort of mirror to target your system then clearly you can use that type of mirror to reflect that energy at 99+% efficiency. At this point in time your talking about a hypothetical system so feel free to pick any part of the EM Spectrum and you can find it's going to be a pain to use as either you need to rapidly swivel your laser system or you going to lose a lot of energy as it passes though the air or you can use the same substance used in your mirrors to make a missile immune to said system.
We're discussing both systems, so it's only fair to mention both. Lasers have a faster targetting system than masers (due to the ability to reflect visible wavelengths), but masers are able to penetrate better due to higher wave lengths. Both have advantages/disadvantages that to be weighed in before deploying a system. A mirror on a high powered laser is doable, but has to be precision crafted to be able to take the load. Note that such a mirror is vastly different from a "reflective surface" on a missile. From here:
The optical power levels inside the laser devices themselves are so horrendously high that the high-reflectivity laser mirrors operate just on the verge of self-destruction. Any flaw or blemish or dust particle on the mirror surface causes the mirror reflectivity to decrease or its absorption to increase. As the absorbing spot gets warmer, its absorption goes up, and the situation goes to pot in a runaway fashion. The result is near-instantaneous catastrophic runaway thermal damage which blows the surface off the mirror faster than you can possibly shut things down. The supersonic nozzles are
extremely fragile and touchy also.
While you can "use the same substance" as you suggest, it's doubtful that you could maintain the perfect mirror on the missile, or for that matter even acheive such a mirror.
You can't fire rail guns over the horizon as they a lose a lot of kinetic energy going tough the air and don't don't have ballistic trajectories unless there moving at slow speeds at which point you can just use gun powder to do that.
You obviously haven't seen the Raytheon specs on the new railguns. They fire a non-explosive, guided projectile straight up, then direct it to the target on the way down. Over the horizon is *EXACTLY* what it does, and it does it with a range of ~100 miles. (Or so the brochure says.
http://www.navyleague.org/sea_power/may_04_10.php
http://www.raytheon.com/newsroom/articles/ddx_jan
http://www.strategypage.com/messageboards/message
I'd provide a link to the munition itself, but I can't find the article at the moment. If I find it, I'll add it in another post.
It's not a designer drug.
I cover my missiles with a reflective substance for 200$.
It doesn't work that way. Reflective sheets can deflect some of the energy, but they will still heat up from the remainder. When we're talking a multi-megawatt pulse, your reflective surface is as good as chicken fried toast. The novel Footfall had an interesting defense system that involved active water cooling near the skin of the ship, but that wouldn't work very well for missiles. In the case of Footfall's Archangel, the ship was only able to carry such a system because it was a heavily overpowered Orion warship. (It carried several space shuttles up into space with it.) Missiles don't have that kind of thrust-to-weight ratio.
Also, masers operate at wavelengths higher than visible light, so your reflective surfaces would be even less effective against those.
PS: You might be able to shoot down aircraft from several miles, but I can launch a missile while over the horizon and still hit you.
As I said in another post, lasers/masers would work best for point-defense and not long range fire. So we'll fire off a rail gun round over the horizon, it will destroy your pathetic ship, then the point defense lasers will take out your slow moving incoming missiles. Result? Total destruction to you and your offsensive capabilities, zero impact on our combat effectiveness. Game over, you lose.
More seriously, Tritum + Phosphor would do nicely without posing much of a health risk. The only catch is that Tritium cost $$$ for very small quantities. For something the size of a lightsaber, it's likely that the cost of the Tritium would be too high.
The original poster had the best idea. Filling clear plastic tubes with a phosphorescent solution would have given them all the effect they wanted, but without the inherent danger. Of course, Adobe After Effects would have been even cheaper and safer, but these guys were obviously amatuers.
And, lastly, where's the video?
It's likely the device blew up prior to the start of the filming. Otherwise they would have had a complete record of the explosion.
I get to play with some reasonably high power lasers at work
;-)
Lucky you. Most people won't let me near the kitchen or power tools, much less a kilowatt or megawatt laser!
The power densities that some lasers put out is greater than the power per unit area exiting the surface of the sun. This isn't a problem so long as nothing in the high power density region absorbs the wavelength of light that the laser is running at - as long as the optics are transparent the light goes in, gets bent around, and comes out the other side without causing any heating.
So, if you were to make a laser weapon for the military, what do you think would be the best solution for such issues? For example, would placing the optics deep inside a barrel that is hermetically sealed while not is use provide sufficient respite? Or are more extreme measures necessary?
Well, "Tom & Jerry" ain't exactly "Gone With the Wind" is it?
No kidding. Tom & Jerry is WAY more important!
Is this some parallel universe you live in? The definition of geek means that "getting laid" is restricted to chicken eggs. Maybe you should hand in your geek card right now?
:-)
You need to watch the movie. Knight takes them all to a pool where he managed to sneak in a bunch of girls from a nearby (girls only) beauty school. He told the guys something along the lines of "Gentlemen, here is your last chance to get laid!"
In the end, the weird guy who has a lab in the closet gets the girl because he wins the lottery, and the kid gets a geek girl who's a hyperactive insomniac. Great movie.
In this case, it is the tool. Or more precisely, misusing the tool. The DVNS tech is designed for live action movies and thus does a poor job on drawn cartoons. The "correct" method for restoring cartoon film is to take apart each cell and restore the cell individually. This process is similar to colorizing a black and white movie, and produces results that can look better than the original film!
According to the article given by the first poster, they even have digital tools to speed up this process as well. Thus the only real excuse is "we don't want to spend the time or money". *shrug*
From your article:
At first thought, it seems silly to put new cartoons through DVNR because they shouldn't be dirty, or so you'd think. Danny Antonucci, creator of Ed, Edd n Eddy, says that when negatives come back from Korea, they are so dirty that it's a necessity to run them through DVNR.
Yikes. From the sounds of it, you'd think they're processing the film in grass huts!
Ahh... so you're saying that because they're using "microlasers" to test the bomb triggers, they couldn't possibly be using lasers for anything else.
Nope. I'm saying that the page I linked to is a full description of what the stockpile program is doing. Their only mention of lasers is the use of triggers for Sprytons. Until someone produces a link or hard reference to the method in question (using fusion reactors to test weapons), then we have no evidence to suggest that the military is doing or wants to do such a thing.
Is that clear enough for you, or should I say it again?
Hello? That's the NIF! You've managed to go in full circle away from "the military wants this too" back to "the NIF is doing these experiments"! We already know that. What we need proven is that the military wants to test their hydrogen bombs with such reactors. So far no evidence has come forth to support that assertion.
Wireless is an industry term that refers to using radio transmissions for communicating with devices. e.g. AT&T refers to their cell service as "wireless service". Induction is not wireless because it doesn't transmit radio transmissions. It works through interferance with an EM field extended out only a few centimeters. The card must be inside the field to function, and cannot be activated from a greater distance with "a more powerful device" as some idiots insisted upon. Such attempts would would either burn out the device (too much juice), stand everyone's hair on end instantly, fry your ass with arcing energy, or all of the above.
The formal name is Thor which is nothing more than a cannister in space with a bunch of welding rolds with fins, some type of seeker head (I'd go with dual IR/millimeter wave radar, perhaps with an optical backup) dropped from orbit. A few hundred to a few thousand of those could ruin your whole day.
Orbital mechanics doesn't work like that. To hit anything, you'd have to deorbit the devices on a proper trajectory. Depending on your own orbit, such a trajectory could take a full orbit before it comes down. In that time, the battlegroup could have moved, thus making them a non-target. Compare this to the Naval mounted lasers which have a pure line of sight firing solution. (Well, almost. You do have to correct for atmospheric refraction.)
Basically, Thor is far more useful for hitting stationary targets than it is for hitting ships, thus making Naval vessels just as potent as ever.
Let me be the first to say that if they pull off this laser plan, the reward should be to surround them with a million [naked] women screaming and throwing tiny pickles at them.
;-)
Why am I the only one who has that dream?
1) If it's a concern, fill the space the reactor takes up with ammo, and only shoot as fast as often as the reactor is capable of delivering enough power (which wouldn't be constant). Your ammo will hold out longer than the reactor would before you have to go back and refit.
:-)
Large Naval vessels already have reactors capable of providing power for these weapons. The reactors can be ramped up to provide power to energy weapons at a rate exceeding that of conventional ammo. The limiting factor would be the energy weapon's duty cycle.
2) Maybe. I'm not sure that would be faster.
Far lot faster than lauching a point-defense missile. Besides, we've got super-fast mirrors from fiber-optics research that can squeeze off the shot before the machine guns can get off their first bullet. Keep in mind that a mirror can be kept spinning while a gun has to swivel with the target.
3) True, but only marginally important. Remember that "it takes up less space" argument is wrong - or at least has been wrong so far.
It's not about space. Well, except when we're talking missiles, but assume bullets and shells for the moment. In the case of a hit on a vessel, the magazine is a horribly vital area that can easily destroy the entire ship if hit. It's usually buried deep inside ships to prevent such damage, but secondary explosions and fires have been known to trigger such detonations.
4) This is definitely not in favor of the laser, and probably the biggest reason why we're not using them now. You basically have to haul a power station with the laser whereever you go.
This is NOT a problem on modern naval vessels. The Navy currently has the DD(X) and CVN(X) class ships up for energy weapon fittings. While the gas turbines of the DD(X) class might make it unsuitable (too much drain on the fuel supply), the CVN(X) class is perfect. It's already hauling around reactors that almost never run at 100% power, the new class decouples energy production from the drive shafts, and it carries around a ten year supply of fuel. What could be a more perfect setup?
A power station is much more difficult to keep up and running than a BFG,
Well, on carriers the power station has to be run one way or another. The BFG is usually kept on a separate boat all together (Battleships and Cruisers), the former of which has been fully retired.
Also, lasers have to be kept really, really clean. Dust is a problem.
Not having experience with high powered lasers (yeah, like anyone's going to let me near one with more than a few milliwatts of output), I can't really speak to this point. But my primary thought is: Wouldn't any dust particles get vaporized by the beam? How do the characteristics of this situation vary from lasers to masers?
If you've already got a power station handy, it might be useful as an auxillary weapon.
Point defense is probably the most useful situation for beam weapons, as they can't fire over the horizon. However, such weapons could also be useful for future space combat scenarios. i.e. Just like a battleship used to bombard land, a ship on the ocean could potentially bombard space targets. Retaliation would be the biggest concern (they can hit you just as easily as you can hit them), but the requirements that space ships be light (no reactor) works in the favor of Naval ships.
And it wouldn't be so much of an auxillary weapon (technically, everything on a carrier other than planes is auxillary) as it would be another weapon that has particular uses.
Oooo! Oooo! Oooo! I think hydrogen bombs are a good idea! Because we're all going to *wish* we had more Russian super-nukes if a large asteroid comes a-knocking...
You're overlooking advantages of laser weapons though:
:-)
1. No ammo. As long as your reactors hold out, so can your weapons.
2. Point defense. When the enemy is swamping your vessel with missiles, lasers can be used to quickly target and destroy the incoming bogeys.
3. No magazine. There's no ammo, so there's nothing to make go "BOOM" in the case of a lucky shot.
4. Reliability. Since the computer only has to control a targetting mirror and not swivel a large hunk of metal, the reliabiity of the entire weapon goes up while maintenence goes down.
That being said, a gigawatt laser is probably not necessary, but it is doable for < 1 sec pulses of fire. No cold fusion required.
Note that the same advantages hold true of masers which may prove to be more effective weapons in the long run.
Ah hah! We've found a faker! Get the feathers and tar! Drive him out! Let loose the dogs of war! ;-)
I see we share the same taste in bunny slippers.
:-) My favorite part is anything "In defiance to you Kent...". If you've ever read LaMothe's "Tricks of the Game Programming Gurus", he' constantly dropping Real Genius references. Such as, "Without correcting for the polar vs. cartesian coordinates, the projection looks warped. Or in defiance to you Kent, it's like looking through a fishbowl!" Half the reason why it was such an awesome book! ;-)
That's my wifes favorite line, too.
You'd think by now I'd remember to double check my facts instead of using my oft-fautly memory. Yes, they are terawatt lasers, but as you say they only fire for nanoseconds. In my defense, my confusion is remembered from trying to sort out the previous story's "facts". :-)
Riigghht. I'm not saying there isn't a reason for doing such a thing, I'm saying that the reasons stated make no sense. i.e. There's information missing somewhere here that would put the puzzle together. And you know what? I looked it up myself.
From this page, they are not using lasers for fusion tests as the anon poster suggested. Instead, they're using microlasers to do Spryton trigger tests. So no, nuclear scientists are not really, really stupid. Someone just has their facts out of whack (which happens).
If anyone *does* have a link to the military doing fusion testing with lasers, then by all means. Post a link!
That still doesn't make any sense. Why would you go through all the trouble of testing the dueterium/lithium samples in a reactor when they could just as easily do a purity test? And for that matter, why aren't they more concerned with the plutonium detonator, which *will* become useless?
Maybe you have more info that would help, but I just can't fathom why anyone would attempt to test a fusion bomb in this manner.
Ok, ok. I totally got this reference right away. Which maybe dates me a bit (I'm under 30).
:-)
A few people will usually get it. But the majority will say something amazingly stupid.
But what makes that movie (and that scene) so special?
Oh, come on! That's the ultimate 80's party movie for geeks! They pulled off all sorts of geeky pranks (dry ice in the hall, disassembling/reassembling a car in the dorm, tuning a radio to braces), saved the world through some pretty creative hacking/espionage, and even pulled an awesome prank on the bad guy! What's not to like?
Group think. Meh, original scenes make group think happen because the group remembers them.
Ummm... no. Group Think refers to the Slashdot mentality of accepting the story spin at face value without checking the facts. A perfect example was the Chase Mastercard story from a day or two ago. The poster said "wireless", "RFID", and "insecure", thus ensuring that 95% of the posts were "This sucks and is insecure wireless crap that I can hack like this RFID hack (some pointless link here)!" The truth of the matter was that the card was not wireless (induction), not RFID (smartcard), and was not insecure (crypto chip). It was actually a marked improvement over the current cards! And yet, the last response to my rebuttals of such nonsense still had someone calling it wireless and insecure! Enough to make me want to drop-kick a few people...
Actually, the military does need a laser this powerful. You see, it will allow them to remove a tiny sample from any one of our nuclear warheads and induce fusion in line with exactly what happens when the bomb is dropped.
Why would they want to do that? Right now the equipment for a fusion reactor is massive, has to be carefully calibrated, and wouldn't really be effective for a bomb. In short, we're a LONG way from a pure fusion bomb. I can imagine that the military has a passive interest at the moment, but it's doubtful they'll take any more of an interest until the equipment is operating, proven, and many of the other issues have been worked out.
Honestly, this design would be far more useful for a Dadelus drive than it would be for a bomb.