how are you gona hold it in place?
You could use a shell, or just hold it by adhesion.
how are you gona hold it in place?
You could use a shell, or just hold it by adhesion.
Do we get UCGO combat vehicles?
What about a large liquid mirror?
Heck with a liquid mirror. Make the entire exterior out of liquid encased in glass with a energy scattering bacground made of a material similar to the tiles on the shuttle. The fluid is kept constantly circulating and run the fluid through trubines that take advantage of the heated fluid converting it into energy. (Heating from the sun would also contribute to this.). But by heating the circulating fluid the enemy is simply adding power to your own laser system.
I think we're going to try to implement lasers... they're kinda hard to do though. You could fire an invisible vessel travelling at the speed of light, but then vessels that intersect the "beam" won't take damage. We're thinking though
It won't work. Glass for example, isn't perfectly transparent, so the energy it absorbs will cause it to vaporise.
I agree, somewhat. There isn't much of a chance of an object coming between the source and the target for the duration of a high-energy stream a few seconds long.Considering that it would take a photon a 300th of a second to travel 1000 kilometers, any other vessels intersecting the beam shouldn't be a problem.
But what about a lower-energy, long-duration shot, that would track the target for several minutes?
Well, the best defence against a relatively short-range weapon such as a laser should be "blast the weapon's platform into red-hot fragments because it can come near enough to use it"...
True 'nuff. But why would a laser be in any way a "short range weapon"? Given the speed and fact that it can't be detected until it hits, the only range would be objects getting in the way. In LEO, that might be a problem, but GEO and interplanetary space it wouldn't be such a problem.
Don't forget the detection and travel time delay problems. Also a laser still looses power by the beam widening over distance (compared to normal light, it only has the advantage that it does not widen by refraction), since you have no infinitely large aperture.
I don't see how visual acquisition of targets is a problem. The main thing about laser aiming would be to keep the beam on the target, eh? That would require careful observation and predictions at a high frequency, though, so a targeting computer is still essential.
I don't see how visual acquisition of targets is a problem. The main thing about laser aiming would be to keep the beam on the target, eh? That would require careful observation and predictions at a high frequency, though, so a targeting computer is still essential.
And anticipate the motion of the target correctly, even at short astronautical distances, you can already make even perfect sensors and laser guidance miss you, even with modest accelerations. All because of the round-trip time (Target->Sensors->Guidance->Control->Target)
With realistic sensors and laser guidance systems, you have even at much shorter distances a good chance to make it miss you, an existing anti-ship missile like the Klub could already be able to "dodge" a laser.
True... but like I said above, you're only going to move so far, so fast, for so long. Reaction mass/fuel for RCS, ship mass, and orbit all limit things quite a bit.
Yes. Just like a 50 GW laser doesn't power itself by the power of Grayskull. You only need to dodge long enough to either leave the range of the laser or have the firing ship power the laser down for cooling or power constraints.