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Post by darthroach on Mar 13, 2017 14:11:18 GMT
Disclaimer: I absolutely building and flying warships. And nothing beats the view of capital fleets lobbing tens of thousands of railgun projectiles at each other with Saturn's rings in the background. And yet I can't help but wonder whether such a thing could ever even happen
Considering just how effective gigantic lasers are, the question is pretty inevitable - does it even make sense to build warships? If we can build mobile warships with lasers big enough to engage at thousands of kilometers, what exactly is stopping the construction of surface laser batteries on moons, asteroids and planets the size of cities, capable of vaporizing anything within millions of kilometers? How could one realistically even approach something like a hostile Saturn system? The only thing I can conceive of that could make it past planetary/orbital defences is barrages of hypervelocity kinetics running cold, relying on imperfect detection. So essentially planet-scale mass drivers. Is there any quirk of physics that would make anything but complete MAD warfare possible in space?
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 13, 2017 14:47:47 GMT
treaties are one thing
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Post by darthroach on Mar 13, 2017 14:57:10 GMT
And as soon as the threat of invasion becomes real, you can bet your arse someone's going to start breaking them. There is just too much to gain by constructing powerful surface defences.
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Post by Enderminion on Mar 13, 2017 14:59:07 GMT
if lasers can wipe out anything within LOS then all lasers will be destroyed by enemy lasers and NLOS missiles
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Post by goduranus on Mar 13, 2017 15:12:15 GMT
For stellar bodies with no atmosphere, I suppose you can fire sand at the laser base to suppress it. To attack a laser base on bodies with thin atmosphere like mars, I think the only way is to bomb it with asteroids.
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Post by darthroach on Mar 13, 2017 15:25:21 GMT
if lasers can wipe out anything within LOS then all lasers will be destroyed by enemy lasers and NLOS missiles It's a lot easier to protect ground based installations. Not to mention the distances involved - where lightspeed lag makes targeting legitimately difficult, and the power requirements start to move up into the astroengineering scales.
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Post by Durandal on Mar 13, 2017 15:28:05 GMT
One strategic consideration that people here arent taking into account is that you can just shine a low powered flashlight at this "giga doom laser" and burn out its optics. God help the doom laser if you have yourself have a laser pointer.
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Post by thorneel on Mar 13, 2017 15:31:23 GMT
Since 1.10, giant lasers are exceedingly fragile to counterlasers. A measly 10 W/m² intensity (available at 1 Mm with a small 100 kW UV laser) will instantly destroy a 10 m aperture superlaser.
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Post by goduranus on Mar 13, 2017 15:34:45 GMT
This shouldn't be the case, I'd reckon you should at least need 1MW/m² for melting the aluminum, depending on how much the laser itself is already heating its mirror.
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Post by darthroach on Mar 13, 2017 16:16:10 GMT
One strategic consideration that people here arent taking into account is that you can just shine a low powered flashlight at this "giga doom laser" and burn out its optics. God help the doom laser if you have yourself have a laser pointer. Are we sure this is not just oversight by qswitched?
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Post by dragonkid11 on Mar 13, 2017 16:21:11 GMT
Ground based orbital laser from atmospheric environment is something near impossible to build properly due to atmosphere light diffraction and even then a space stationary laser with viable capabitlity would be cheaper to build with CoaDE space travel tech.
Asteroid laser however will just get shot repeatedly as it can't be moved.
And of course, recently, counterlaser is a thing now. So you can't just hope to use your gigawatt death laser from the go.
If anything, drones and missiles are the one killing the role of warship off.
And let's be honest here. If laser are as dangerous as nuke and such. Building a laser the size of a goddamn city would just be asking for a war AND a resource hog for no damn reason.
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Post by newageofpower on Mar 13, 2017 17:34:10 GMT
One strategic consideration that people here arent taking into account is that you can just shine a low powered flashlight at this "giga doom laser" and burn out its optics. God help the doom laser if you have yourself have a laser pointer. Are we sure this is not just oversight by qswitched? It is. Regarding doom lasers, as goduranus & dragonkid11 pointed out stationary laser batteries are stationary and extremely vulnerable to sandstorms being fired at 40 (or more) km/s. On bodies with thick atmospheres to protect them from kinetic sand, lasing losses from atmospheric effects become significant as well. Even if you overcome these issues (massive shutters + armored bunkers, long wavelength beams to overcome atmospheric effects) a laser is very dodgeable at light seconds of range, nevermind light minutes. But yes, planetary based weapons have huge advantages over ship carried weaponry, in exchange for loss of mobility and being at the bottom of a gravwell.
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Post by argonbalt on Mar 13, 2017 17:53:35 GMT
Are we sure this is not just oversight by qswitched? It is. Regarding doom lasers, as goduranus & dragonkid11 pointed out stationary laser batteries are stationary and extremely vulnerable to sandstorms being fired at 40 (or more) km/s. On bodies with thick atmospheres to protect them from kinetic sand, lasing losses from atmospheric effects become significant as well. Even if you overcome these issues (massive shutters + armored bunkers, long wavelength beams to overcome atmospheric effects) a laser is very dodgeable at light seconds of range, nevermind light minutes. But yes, planetary based weapons have huge advantages over ship carried weaponry, in exchange for loss of mobility and being at the bottom of a gravwell. This is also disregarding the fact that most lasers will never reach a million+ kilometres, from both dispersion and wavelength issues. So you are only really left with (hypothetically) X-ray lasers which as we have been over here, they are notoriously difficult to get juiced properly. Your other options hypothetically are particle beam weaponry, but that has dispersion on top of charging issues and potential magnetic shielding. This is also ignoring the fact that a million Km is actually not really that far, Earth to Mars is minimal 54000000km maximum 401000000km, with an average of 225000000km. THEN assuming you have some miracle laser or particle weapon that has a range of several hundred million km, the light lag alone can be anywhere from three to 22 minutes. All in all for a moderately defensive position sure mega lasers would be a cool defence, but a thousand km laser being doable does not necessarily mean a million km laser is doable. Not to mention the sand blaster counter measures or what i thought up right now, a bunch of fed ex boxes with lasers pointers hooked up to rcs guidance dumped on mass and trying to shine down your pumping chamber and fry your Pw super bulb.
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Post by newageofpower on Mar 13, 2017 17:59:21 GMT
i thought up right now, a bunch of fed ex boxes with lasers pointers hooked up to rcs guidance dumped on mass and trying to shine down your pumping chamber and fry your Pw super bulb. Argon, the idea that a flashlight with less intensity than average sunlight on Earth's surface will destroy lasing optics is beyond stupid and certainly an oversight by qswitched.
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Post by argonbalt on Mar 13, 2017 18:12:17 GMT
i thought up right now, a bunch of fed ex boxes with lasers pointers hooked up to rcs guidance dumped on mass and trying to shine down your pumping chamber and fry your Pw super bulb. Argon, the idea that a flashlight with less intensity than average sunlight on Earth's surface will destroy lasing optics is beyond stupid and certainly an oversight by qswitched . sounds like someone hates the wonderful concept of millions of laser pointers shining through space and blinding 747 pilots on a dozen worlds
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