“It’s a lot easier to send a power beam directly up or down relative to the ground because there is so much less atmosphere to fight through,” Jaffe explains. “For PRAD, we wanted to test under the maximum impact of atmospheric effects.”
Super impressive! My only complain is that this was done at the White Sounds desert in New Mexico, at over 1200 meters of elevation. For maximum impact they should have done it in Florida on a hot humid day
The desert is bad enough. On a hot day you get convection which will vary the refractive index of light and spread out the beam. I wonder if they have active optics on the transmitter to fight this.
Then you also have the day vs night weather patterns, resulting in intense sun-downer winds. I suggest everyone actually visit a real desert once in their life, where as people seem to think its like a beach, but bigger.
This is a good point. I just meant that a very humid climate might be a more challenging environment for this technology, but it doesn’t mean it’s as useful for real world fighting conditions.
Super impressive! My only complain is that this was done at the White Sounds desert in New Mexico, at over 1200 meters of elevation. For maximum impact they should have done it in Florida on a hot humid day