On 9 Dec 2014 at 12:43, Jeffrey Schwartz wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 at 12:04 PM,  <xxxxxx@shadowgard.com> wrote:
> > 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.
> >
>
> That makes sense...
> ..but...
>
> I can see the pulse hitting the big ball of ice, and there being a
> Bang! as it heats a small area to plasma, which then explodes and
> makes a crater.
> But wouldn't the crater walls be pretty hot?
> And they'd steam off?

Thing is, you are in a vacuum. And *room temp* water vapor is moving
pretty damn fast. Hotter molecules are moving faster.

In a vacuum, they pretty much move in a straight line. So they
disperse in milliseconds.

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