Sam D'Amico, Impulse Labs founder, says scaling handheld 10 kW laser weapons depends on chip packaging, not fundamental physics

@sdamico Request for startup: cod wonder weapons

Lasers are great until you need to operate in a city and explain yourself to the FAA.

Take a look at http://hyperjet.eu - microscopic non-Newtonian fluid droplets accelerated to around Mach 3, cathode steering, leidenfrost, kinetic energy of 22LR, and on components available anywhere

@sdamico Honestly horrifying. The blind-a-thousand-people-instantly laser is probably buildable right now.

@sdamico Aren’t we like 15 minutes away from figuring this out? Those Chinese welding lasers are basically there…

@arram Yes

@Biggiethelad1 @sdamico How much time would it take to write a few lines of code that guide cheap drones into a point in space where a missed shot from a laser turret with known coordinates hits its own aircraft or satellite?

Do I also need to explain corner reflectors and mirror coatings?

@uavhe @sdamico > Lasers are great until you need to operate in a city and explain yourself to the FAA. Hi we’re the US military, please carve out for natsec reasons is pretty easy (or otherwise in a state that this is entirely moot)

@sdamico @styropyro_ moment

@uavhe @sdamico I do not think we are risking accidental satellite shoot down with current lasers, and significantly easier than ensuring you’re on target with a worse liquid .22LR bullet given it travels at light speed and won’t have drop / have a need to account for drone movement as much

@arram @sdamico This is a lot more worrying for terrorism than for war...

@zachglabman @sdamico thanks but I don't know why we need to weapon my wonder