Navy laser demo

     Remember that laser the Navy was working on?  The one that cut through ridiculous amounts of steel per second?  Well check out this video I found at geek.com.  It shows a lower powered prototype of what they are after.

The article at geek.com describes more about Star Wars efforts, the Navy laser, and the Boeing laser that I have been posting about.  Looks like someone else is interested in this stuff too!

There is also a 5 minute Navy PR video concerning the laser system in the following video, for anyone interested in the Navy laser defense systems.  The PR video explains the Navy's goals and has some nice footage of takedowns.

Stay away from the ocean!

     This post is a sort of follow-up to my last post, Death Rays.  I found an article at dvice.com that described a laser project that the Navy is working on.  The Navy has designed a pretty incredible free-electron laser (free-electron lasers are pretty cool, and you can check out how they work at Wikipedia.).  The article says that the Navy laser "produced a 200 kilowatt beam capable of burning its way through 20 feet of steel per second."  Holy crap!

     That's not all.  The article claims that the Navy is trying to build a laser that will do 100 times as good.  That's right; cut through 2,000 FEET OF STEEL PER SECOND.  Now I know you're thinking, "death rays are as good as real with that kind of technology!"  Just imagine if you sent that thing into space, along with one of those programmable mirrors that they put in laser TVs to direct the laser.  There's your death ray. 

Here's the only problem with that:

     The 20 ft steel/sec laser was the size of a football field, and can only, as of now, fit on a Navy aircraft carrier.  No other vehicle could hold the thing!  Imagine how much power it takes too.  So putting one of these in space is not probable, which means satellite death rays are a ways off.  However, the article reassures us that,

"as improvements in technology enable the laser to shrink, it'll also become more efficient, and by 2015 the goal is to get it down to 50 feet by 20 feet by 10 feet. And by 2020? It might be smaller still, able to fit into helicopters and drones, and it's not too much of a stretch to imagine something small enough to be handheld by 2030."

     That sounds like a world I would want to live in!  The one where terrorists with helicopters could blast through buildings and houses from a distance in a few seconds.  Airborne Gatling gun times a billion!

     I am a bit skeptical about the availability of handheld lasers that are this powerful even by 2030.  Think of the battery that would need to be on them!  The one I show in They're Out There only gets 30 shots, is a little bulky, and is waaaaaaayyyy less powerful.

Still... the fact that these projects are being developed is a little scary.  This stuff might actually end up working, and that might not be a good thing.