Lasers

Lasers are devices which emit beams of energized light. Though small-scale lasers are easily manufactured and a relatively ubiquitous technology, high-power forms have numerous applications in the military, civilian, and industrial sectors. The speed of laser emissions is the speed of light, with potentially infinite range depending on their design.

Weaponization

Capable of directing high-intensity energy onto a single point, lasers can be used for rapid localized heating of specific points on a target, damaging sensitive equipment or outright vaporizing metal. However, lasers have been found to be more effective as a support weapon than an outright offensive one, particularly onboard ground and space stations which can more easily afford their power and mass requirements, as opposed to mobile spacecraft where the energy and mass density is more effectively utilized elsewhere.

Offensively, lasers are most notably effective against solar panels, radiators, sensors, thrusters, and other lasers. Solar panels are delicate and sensitive to light, and are inherently large protruding structures, as are radiators which can be directly heated with lasers to impede or even reverse their intended function.

Thrusters, sensors, and other external equipment are also vulnerable to lasers through various means, by destructive heating of the exposed hardware or through interference with technology. Such equipment may be disabled with only minor damage, rather than needing to be outright destroyed.

Finally, lasers are themselves vulnerable to other lasers; their design necessitates complex energy pumps and optical systems exposed directly toward a target, systems which can be rendered inoperative with minor damage.

At their maximum potential, lasers are an extremely effective weapon. However, their design is complex; no two designs are the same, and each has a handful of positives overshadowed by a host of drawbacks. Only in particular scenarios is any one laser design an effective weapon. For this reason a common approach is to have only a few laser generators, with several different optical arrays to fire the laser at different ranges and energy densities.

Smaller-scale lasers can be used defensively, for point-defense against incoming missiles or to deflect or destroy spaceborn debris, whether the debris was part of a targeted attack or not.

Civilian Use

At a range of a meter or less, even hand-held lasers can easily cut through thick metal or rock. Though applicable for special operations such as boarding derelict vessels or abandoned stations, this application is used widely throughout the industrial sector for scrapping, manufacturing, and construction.

Lasers are also an effective tool for space-waste management. As any space-based society develops its operations, there is the potential for space debris to accumulate in common orbits where it poses a dangerous threat to the continued use of that orbit. A small piece of rogue debris traveling at orbital velocity can annihilate a much larger object, shattering it into more debris which can pose further dangers, eventually leading to a runaway cascade effect. Lasers can be used to remove space debris by focusing a beam at a point on a target; the surface at the focus point will vaporize, resulting in a small amount of thrust that can push the target to a new orbit or de-orbit altogether. Small enough debris can be vaporized outright.

Other commonplace civilian uses include range-finding and information transfer. Lidar (Light imaging, detection, and ranging) is one of the most common ranging technologies throughout civilization, and lasers are used to transmit much of civilization’s digital data. The industrial and scientific uses of lasers are innumerable, forming integral aspects of civilization from manufacturing to shipbreaking to fusion power.