Re: Colonists and Weapons

>Vaporising a 20 cm long wound channel with a sectional area of  one
>square centimeter requires delivering 45 kilojoules to the target...

>Ignoring all losses and assuming that all efficiencies are 100%,
>the solar collector area is sixty square metres...

>...it would be wildly optimistic for the efficiencies of
>either the laser or the solar collector to get above 50%.

All of these statements are based on CURRENT, 2001 technology, not SG2 
sci-fi tech and thus are basically mute.

>Until someone starts burning holes in living things, we will not know
>how uaseful the 45 kilojoules guess is.

And how are these assumptions about LASERS any less acceptable than
those 
even less knowledge-based assumptions we all are making about gauss
weapons 
and hover tanks(for example)????  At least we know some of the the 
limitations of LASER and humankind will have more time to
perfect/improve 
the LASER.

>Your wide beam mode will require huge amounts of power.

Based on CURRENT, 2001 technology, not SG2 sci-fi tech...  Not to
mention 
(again) 100+ ton tanks can fly and humans can wear powered armor due to 
advances in power generation but this same universe will not allow not 
enough power for a more efficient LASER to burn through a enemy on the 
battlefield???

I just seems to me that some are prejudiced against LASERs as future 
battlefield weapons because they already exist, and thus we know some of

their CURRENT limitations.  This is an advantage, NOT a disadvantage. 
Until 
you know a technologies limitations, you can hardly work to improve it. 

Whereas weapon systems that are not even on an engineer's drawing board
are 
accepted without qualms (that I have heard on this list) when we don't
even 
have a realistic clue as to what their limitations might even be (gauss 
weapons being one).  This just does not seem logically consistent to me.

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