Air Force Turns 747 Into Holster for Giant Laser (washingtonp ost.com)

[Steve Schear]

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