Nowadays laser guns are achievable but they are inefficient. So when do you think it will become reality. Many websites are skeptical about this so I decided to post this here P.S. Quotes and replies are allowed.
Considering the US Navy literally have a working laser canon mounted on one of their battleships, controlled by a gaming console controller... Yes, Yes they will.
Probably around the time the human race unlocks space combat. Given Newton's Law "Every force has an equal and opposite reaction" firing bullets in space would throw you back just as fast, so using lasers would minimize said pushback.
It's already possible, it's just not as viable as some alternatives that are even more lethal. burn a tiny hole/slice something or just evaporate it with plasma? rip it apart with a railgun? instead of lasers i'd imagine a future of anti-matter guns with tiny hadron colliders built in, black hole bullets anyone?
I would if i wasn't just randomly using profound terms to sound interesting and based all my assumptions on video game logic.
The biggest downside to viable laser weapons is its high energy requirement. The amount of energy you need to melt high strength steel is in the gigawatts, at least if you want a visible damage. You could greatly reduce the energy requirement is if you reduce the beam to 1 millimeter width, which is very small and would take a very long time to bring down even a patrol boat. In comparison, a gun needs a volley of half a dozen bullets to completely bring down the same patrol boat. Unlike conventional weapons, lasers take a long time to deal significant damage, if you want to limit it so that it can be powered by a destroyer or a cruiser at sea. It can deal with incoming missiles, sure, given time. But if you expect it to melt incoming bullets, haha, that's still fantasy. If you want to use it to melt the hull of a navy ship, sure it can do that, eventually. But why bother when you can do that much faster by shooting it with cannonshells or firing an anti-ship missile at it? It doesn't use ammunition? Does that even matter? In a battle what matters is to neutralize the threat as soon as possible, which means blowing up the ship so that everyone would be busy abandoning ship instead of manning the cannons to shoot back at you. Shooting the engine and then targeting the turrets one after another would take far too long with a laser weapon, even if you have 3 separate laser cannons. Then again, having 3 separate laser cannons each with the capacity to melt turrets and high strength steel to a significant capacity would most definitely exceed the power generation capability of a single ship. Even a nuclear reactor would struggle to power such a setup. That's why laser weapons, although doable, is still just a novelty. Cannons and missiles can do their work just fine without significant modification. Once we've perfected railguns, laser weapons would be even more obsolete, being reduced to the job of shooting down anti-ship missiles only. But cannonshells and missiles are heavy and take up valuable space, you say? Sure they're heavy, but we don't carry them by hand unlike in the movie Battleship. As for space, it's not that big. A ship at sea is not supposed to be a superman that can sink a hundred other ships or fight for 200 years. The amount of ammunition it carries is sufficient for its needs. A tank on land carries a tiny fraction of what a navy ship can carry, but you never hear anyone complain that the tanks have low ammunition. You'd probably think laser weapons would do well in space. Not really. The power requirement is still huge and humanity does not have the technology to put nuclear reactors on satellites yet. Even so, it will do so little harm against aliens anyway. You see, if any aliens were able to deal with cosmic radiation and ionizing radiation which is way worse than lasers, they will definitely be immune to lasers. Any spaceship that wants to fly beyond their equivalent of Van Allen belt must be able to deal with cosmic radiation and ionizing radiation, which thus makes laser weapons obsolete for ship on ship combat.
Nope it is not approved by the regulations yet Just to inform you that scientists are still considering this idea of black hole bullet (theories only) What I felt after reading this was 'Where did she copy this one from'
I think it is unlikely to happen, unless a big war between major powers break out that is... And even then, it's doubtful. Like, laser guns are cute, but aren't nukes better? Why invest resources on that then?
Because they offer surgical precision, imagine an asteroid heads to earth, hitting it with a nuke will cause fragmentation, nuclear fallout etc. But with a laser you could slice it into a shape where the direction is altered slightly. Just a random example of course, but imagine if you had lasers in the security cams, capable of instantly zapping a robber's gun or a terrorists kill switch. Not in every setting is greater damage better. Although, for every scenario you can come up with there's an alternative that doesn't require a laser lol. Lasers are great in medical procedures though, or any situation where you need 'surgical precision'. Let's say, dismantling a bomb and not to mention that it's potentially a good assassination tool if you can just smuggle it and have no visual or sound involved while you pew someone of importance. (although invisible sound waves make more sense.)
Ai-chan reads a lot and has brainstormed for 3 separate sci-fi stories. It is unfortunate that lasers are not the futuristic weapon people want it to be. It's completely useless for every fantastic uses sci-fi authors imagined it to be. Stunning people? Doesn't really work, unless you just want to permanently blind people, in which case it works very well. Tazer ammunition for shotguns work much better. In sci-fi setting, it's much better to use particle or plasma beam to stun. Some particles have debilitating effect on others while plasma can be modified to produce a wider heating effect via blooming instead of a concentrated pulse to punch a hole open. Navy ship to ship combat. Would not work. The time it takes to cut open a hull is too long, the power requirement is too high, blooming is a huge problem and you have to deal with cooling systems too. The ships can also easily counter it by coating their ship in silver or reflective paint. A cannon shell is hands down a much better choice of weapon. Space ship to ship combat. Would not work. Any ship that has a countermeasure against cosmic radiation and ionizing radiation would be immune to it. A particle beam or pulse weapon could work, so could plasma weapons, if power is not an issue. Satellite to satellite combat. Could work, though it will suffer from energy sourcing and cooling system. The biggest problem for a laser satellite is not asteroids, but how to cool it down after it fires its laser. This is space, there is no air to cool it. So the cannon will be very hot every time it fires. It would be much better for the satellite to carry guided missiles or a railgun. As defensive system for shooting down bullet. Absolutely rubbish. It is not possible to use Carbon Dioxide Laser (which is the most commonly used laser now) to melt a bullet in mid flight. Complete fantasy.
Oh I think it is more like multiple countries want laser tech fo the sake of learning the control materials Also no offense but Heat energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation certainly can radiate through space
Yes, it can. Ai-chan doesn't say it can't. The problem is what happens at the target. As Ai-chan said, if the ship has countermeasures for ionizing radiation or cosmic radiation, they will be immune to the effects of lasers. And they need this because otherwise, people inside will suffer irreversible cellular damage. We don't have this countermeasure, that's why our astronauts need to return to the surface after a short stint on the ISS. If they stay longer, they will develop cancer or worse, die.
Yes, the problem with developing cancer was in the past, but not because they have a countermeasure. The truth is, there is no more astronauts suffering cancer because they understand now what being in orbit would do to a human body. So they made a cutoff point. If the radiation in their bodies reaches a certain point, they have to go home, without fail. The average cutoff point is 6 months, because that's the longest time a person can reliably last before they risk suffering major damage to their cells due to the radiations. It is believed that astronauts can last longer, unless they spent the whole 6 months doing spacewalks, but nobody really wants to test it. Sure, there used to be people who even stayed in ISS for a year, but at the risk of developing long term health damage. There is no countermeasure for it other than a long rest on Earth. https://theconversation.com/how-much-radiation-damage-do-astronauts-really-suffer-in-space-60475 And sorry for misunderstanding your earlier point. Yes, heat can radiate into vacuum, but as infrared. It's much less efficient compared to air cooling. After all, a medium such as steel has a higher energy retention capacity than vacuum, so infrared would only slowly radiate the heat out. The same heat that would take only minutes to transfer into the air will take hours to days to radiate out as infrared.
I don't think it will work after all, where can they find the Stormtroopers to control the laser weapons? It might be good against rockets and electrics, since the heat would destroy electronics or precombust the rockets. I am skeptical about them ever replacing firearms. They could be used for blinding, kind of like a flash grenade, though.
In theory, advances in battery science in the end ought to make such weapons possible. But even if they do, the weapons might also no longer hearth the vibrant inexperienced or pink beams sci-fi followers may expect. Most lookup into laser weapons that are supposed to scorch ambitions makes use of non-visible wavelengths of light.