In article <3a01ba7e$1@news.povray.org>, "Daniel Schwen" 
<sch### [at] geocitiescom> wrote:

> Doubtful, since rocket exhaust would be pretty hot, and with no 
> surrounding air it just sprays off and diffuses into the void. That 
> wouldn't leave enough atoms to ionize.

I meant fire special rockets which leave a trail dense enough to carry 
the current for a short time before dissipating. The entire goal of the 
rockets would be to get to the target as fast as possible and leave a 
relatively dense ion trail, they wouldn't even need a payload. The range 
would still be limited though. Or they could trail a fine wire that 
would be vaporized to produce the needed channel.
Or you could confine ions with magnetic fields, but if you can get 
magnetic fields that powerful and that well controlled you probably have 
much better ways to blast your prey.(spray them with antimatter?)


> You would have to take a flouride excimer laser at 150nm. That would 
> be ultra violet and not visible anymore. One day people might even be 
> able to build them smaller than the size of three refrigerators :) 
> (sure would look kind of clumsy on H.E's mech)

I was thinking of some kind of ultraviolet laser...but three 
refrigerators? This thing looks like it's slightly smaller than one 
kitchen refrigerator...and it has two lasers. Maybe some kind of 
one-shot laser...a high-power chemical laser. Oh, well...if this 
civilization has the ability to generate the power in a package that 
small, they can probably make a smaller laser too. :-)
As for the visibility thing, you would probably see a bright white flash 
before the actual charge is released as the laser ionizes the air. Those 
red lines must be targeting lasers. :-)
Of course, with the wire rockets idea(and possibly with the rockets 
alone), you don't even need a laser.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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