For our ongoing thread regarding Mark's story: Here is an interesting article
that is in my school newspaper. A LT here has come up with a way to shrink the
size of a 100 Million Volt Electron Beam Laser to be able to fit onto a
surface ship (as in blue
water). The /existing/ prototype (minus the size reducing
improvement)is capable of cutting through more than 100 feet of steel in a
fraction of a second. They want to use this to protect ships from missiles.
This would be a very effective weapon in space if the size reduction issues
work
out....
By the way the Campus Newspaper is an open source document, so I'm not giving
anything away... Phil P.
> On 04/21/97 14:17:22 Phil wrote:
A LT
> here has come up with a way to shrink the size of a 100 Million Volt
Yikes! I'm sure with a nice tracking system it would indeed protect ships,
preferably by burning launchers, ships, crew, politicians, etc. before they
launched!:)
Christopher To quote Sigue Sigue Sputnik "Mmm, mmm, I *luv* technology!"
> osiris.1@ix.netcom.com writes:
@:) > [ Laser ]
@:)
@:) Yikes! I'm sure with a nice tracking system it would indeed @:) protect
ships
Probably it doesn't need anything but some tweaks to existing
tracking systems, since for ship-board duty the laser is going to be
travelling more or less instantaneously to the target. My guess is the
tracking software people would be very happy about this kind of
weapon. For longer-range (ie space) use you start running into
problems again.
@:) preferably by burning launchers, ships, crew, politicians, @:) etc. before
they launched!:)
Now that would be an interesting tracking system:
"Sir, politician spotted on channel five! He's giving a speech at the Emerald
Green Mall, sir!" "Right, lock target and... FIRE!" "Laser away, sir!" <from
TV>: "YAAAARGH!" followed by cheers.