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In article <3a01ba7e$1@news.povray.org>, "Daniel Schwen"
<sch### [at] geocities com> 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] mac com, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tag povray org, http://tag.povray.org/
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