Re: Ravening Laser Death Station

On Aug 14, 12:01 pm, IsaacKuo <mech...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 14, 1:32 am, Logan Kearsley <chronosur...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Aug 14, 12:03 am, IsaacKuo <mech...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I'm thinking in terms of a FEL system which is maybe 100m to 1km
in overall length.

Hm. Perhaps one could build a very large ring of focusing components
(fresnel lenses / zone plates) on the surface of a moon or asteroid,
with the laser apparatus at the center, capable of rotating to fire at
any one of them. Preferably at the pole of a slowly rotating body
(like The Moon) so as to fire in the ecliptic, but one could simply
rely on the rotation of faster-spinning bodies to periodically point
the lenses the right way.

The distance I propose between the drone and the laser
engine is 300,000km. There is no moon or asteroid
sufficiently big for a ring 300,000km in radius.

Some further thoughts...I had previously speculated that
you might combine ground based laser generators with
far away drones. That won't work for many locations.
At one light second away, the drone's orbital velocity will
be far too different from the velocity of the ground station
if it's on a moon or major planet. The only potentially
workable locations would be on isolated asteroids in
solar orbit. These small asteroids aren't sufficiently big
for the "whack-a-mole" concept to be workable. The
laser engine is on the order of 100m in diameter, if not
much larger. You need tunnel systems several orders
of magnitude larger than that in order to reasonably
hide the engine from enemy bombardment.

So, it seems this weapon system favors fully mobile
"ships" over any sort of fixed installations.

Isaac Kuo

.

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