Star Wars Potential: Can Lasers Replace Nuclear Bombs?

[sid_galt]

Can a system of lasers be built which has the ability to deliver a vast amount of energy on a small spot on Earth making it a possible effective substitute of the nuclear bomb?

 

[russ_watters]

Certainly not, unless you could power a laser or energy beam with a nuclear bomb (ie, a focused emp or something like that). A nuclear bomb outputs more energy than everything else on Earth combined at the time it goes off.

In any case, that's not what Star Wars is: its an anti-ballistic missile defense.

 

[sid_galt]

Certainly not, unless you could power a laser or energy beam with a nuclear bomb (ie, a focused emp or something like that). A nuclear bomb outputs more energy than everything else on Earth combined at the time it goes off.

OK.

In any case, that's not what Star Wars is: its an anti-ballistic missile defense.

Well, can that be done?

 

[russ_watters]

Well, can that be done?

Yes, a prototype of a daughter technolgoy, the Airborne Laser is being built right now. http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/flash.html

 

[sid_galt]

Yes, a prototype of a daughter technolgoy, the Airborne Laser is being built right now. http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/military/abl/flash.html

Thank you. So why isn't it succesful?

Difficulty in targeting? Can't they use a little spread out beam with a higher amplitude so that they don't have to be so accurate with their aim?

 

[russ_watters]

Thank you. So why isn't it succesful?

Difficulty in targeting? Can't they use a little spread out beam with a higher amplitude so that they don't have to be so accurate with their aim?

So far, it is successful. Do you mean why hasn't it been done before? There are a mountain of technical hurles to overcome (now mostly overcome). Targeting is one, laser power output is another, and beam coherence (when you heat the air it gets turbulent and disperses the beam) is another.

 

[hitssquad]

Certainly not, unless you could power a laser or energy beam with a nuclear bomb

According to Richard Garwin, the SDI's pop-up infrared laser was to be powered by an exploding fission device. This is not to imply that all of the fission energy would be transferred through the laser beam.

 

[russ_watters]

According to Richard Garwin, the SDI's pop-up infrared laser was to be powered by an exploding fission device. This is not to imply that all of the fission energy would be transferred through the laser beam.

I didn't know that. I did know its possible (in theory) to direct the energy from a nuclear bomb - Tom Clancy described a similar phenomena in The Sum of all Fears, where a vaporizing TV dish (in an atomic bomb blast) emitted a focused-emp that knocked out the satellite it was aimed at.

[Google...] A few sites mention a nuclear x-ray laser (I'd heard of the x-ray laser, but not that it was powered by a nuclear weapon), but it doesn't look to me like that ever got off the drawing board. In any case, it seems it was at least possible.

 

[hitssquad]

[Google...] A few sites mention a nuclear x-ray laser

Oops. That seems correct. It must indeed have been an X-ray laser. I read about it 20 years ago in Garwin's The Fallacy of Star Wars and have not brushed up on that issue since then.


Edit: The Union of Concerned Scientists http://www.ucsusa.org/ucs/about/page.cfm?pageID=769 mentions Kurt Gottfried as the "senior author" of The Fallacy of Star Wars, and Amazon.com lists John Tirman as the only author. However, IIRC Garwin said in his recent book Megawatts and Megatons that he was one of the contributors.[/color]

 

[ohwilleke]

Thank you. So why isn't it succesful?

Difficulty in targeting? Can't they use a little spread out beam with a higher amplitude so that they don't have to be so accurate with their aim?

There have been problems. The biggest one has been getting a laser sufficiently powerful to fit in a small enough space to fit on a 747.

 

[Enos]

Its possible but you would have to increase the mass.

 

[FluidSpace]

Anything is possible. A Boeing 747, Lufthansa AirBus or C-5 Galaxy can be retrofitted by a Fusion Reactor (x1000+ times more powerful compared to other powersource systems).

Like a mobile/portable version of this one http://fusion.gat.com/diii-d/photos/