Quote:
Originally Posted by Michael Thayne
I think the issue is how range scales. A 30,000x increase in mass (and more importantly, cost!) only yields a 10x increase in range. So I'm not super-excited about this strategy.
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What ought range to go with, realistically? Naively (i.e. ignoring the engineering of pointing the things) the diameter of the objectives ought to go with [strikethrough]the square of[/strikethrough] ship length. And spot size can go with objective diameter where the weapon is constrained by beam intensity on the objective mirror. Which means that range ought to go with the 2/3 power of ship mass, divided by wavelength.
A factor of 30,000 in ship mass ought to deliver a factor of about 900 in range.