On 9 Dec 2014 at 9:31, Jeffrey Schwartz wrote:

> I'm kinda wondering if using the _ship's_ lasers for this would be the
> easy solution to the problem.
>
> Stand off by 10km, and bathe the ice-ball in 150Mj of laser mojo until
> it is vapor.
> Then move in and skim the vapor.

Weapons grade lasers don't melt. They dump so much energy into a
spot, so fast, that the material *explodes* into plasma.

Even if you dialed them way down, the vapor would disperse into the
vacuum far too fast for you to skim it.

And at high enough energies to get the "blast" effect, many if not
most of the chunks will be departing at high speed.

--
Leonard Erickson (aka shadow)
shadow at shadowgard dot com