23 Jul
2001
23 Jul
'01
6:29 p.m.
At 01:18 PM 7/23/2001 -0400, Trei, Peter wrote:
With high-powered lasers, one of the important destructive mechanisms is blast - the outer layer of the illuminated object vaporizes, and flies away from the rest of the target. The reactive force of this gives the target a hell of a kick. Kicking off strict alignment with it's flight path, or putting a big dent (or even better a hole) in the side of a missile under several G's of stress traveling at a high Mach number is not healthy for the missile.
I have a hard time imagining that a mirrored and faceted vehicle exterior would provide enough absorption to enable this mechanism, otherwise the laser's own mirrors would like destruct from the same exposure. steve