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Old 09-06-2017, 02:18 PM   #7
RyanW
 
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
Default Re: [Ultra-Tech] [Spaceships] Weapons that are hard or impossible to miniaturize

Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Thayne View Post
  • I've heard one possibility for x-ray laser weapons involves a "free electron laser", but IIUC these both have (a) an even larger minimum size than given in SS7 and (b) are tunable, so such a weapon could also function on other wavelengths for say planetary bombardment, a capability Spaceships lasers don't have. So how could an ~SM +10 x-ray laser with the capability in Spaceships work?
Only very recently has a trick to allow a free-electron laser to produce a clean x-ray beam been figured out, and I'm not sure how well it retains tunability.
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