High-Energy Lasers
High-Energy Lasers — Terra Invicta technology. Engineers develop powerful directed energy devices with potential as weapons and in the ignition of nuclear…
About High-Energy Lasers
High-Energy Lasers is a Terra Invicta technology in Energy with a research cost of 1,000.
Engineers develop powerful directed energy devices with potential as weapons and in the ignition of nuclear fusion.
For generations, laser weapons have been a science-fiction staple, but their development for military application has been hampered not purely by their extreme energy requirements, but also thermal blooming. A laser heats the air it passes through, and the subsequent change in air density in turn causes a continued beam to defocus and lose strength. To compound the problem, the beam will bend towards cooler air, which has blighted previous prototypes with poor accuracy. The most obvious response is to further concentrate the beam, but this simply makes the air around it even hotter, and thus perpetuates the issue. At last, however, scientists have been able to perfect lasers, which fire in brief, high-power pulses rather than a sustained ray. While thermal blooming is not an issue in the airless vacuum of space, light (and therefore strength) dissipation over great distances very much still is. As we develop next-generation energy technologies, far more devastating laser weapons for use both within and beyond our skies will become eminently possible.