Pulse laser pistol, anyone?

[Ganelon]

http://hackaday.com/2011/03/10/youll-sh ... se-pistol/

[DaddyHoggy]

Interesting - the comments are also quite interesting - the usual mix of clueless and know-it-alls...

[OneoftheLost]

Interesting. Honestly however, it doesn't interest me all that much. Lasers are used in movies, and its obvious that's where the inspiration came from. I fail to see how laser weapons could possibly be the future. Now, something so imaginative to be a leap forward, say like the historical leap from longbow to musket to rifle, then I'll keep an eye open. Is the laser the next step forward? I seriously doubt it.

That being said, if you look at ANYTHING DARPA is working on, that is some scary shiz.

O_o

[Ganelon]

I doubt it will be a "leap" in commonly found weapons. Any sort of energy beam weapon, I would consider as much of a jump as longbow to musket, though. To go from projectile speed weapons to light speed weapons is at least as much of a jump as from a bow to gunpowder, I think. But I doubt it will ever become commonplace, in any case.

I found it more interesting because of the assorted "everybody knows" reasons over the years for lasers to not be practical sidearms. The inventor figured a way past carrying a large power supply and elaborate cooling systems and came up with something relatively practical. 50 shots per battery pack is practical enough, it could be powered off common batteries in a pinch and etc. It wouldn't do a lot of damage compared to most contemporary firearms, but I sure wouldn't volunteer to get shot with it.

When I was a kid, "laser ray guns" and similar things featured in many space operas. On some levels it's kind of neat that someone figured out a way to make it relatively practical.

But yes, anything DARPA and similar organisation are currently working on would be far scarier as well as more innovative.

Things like microwave pain field generators would be probably far more effective for repelling boarders on spaceships in the Oolite era. Sidearms and etc don't come up much in discussions here because they just aren't currently anything used in gameplay, nor do I think it likely they will be in the near future, except occasionally in the fiction. I've sometimes considered what sort of weapons would be likely sidearms and what sort of strategies would be involved in boarding, but lasers would be unlikely for the same reason contemporary firearms would be unlikely. A stray shot could punch a hole in the hull of a spaceship.

All conjecture, though, since it's not something likely to come up in gameplay and so there isn't much to go on there.