On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 11:00 AM, brin-l-requ...@mccmedia.com wrote:
snip
I looked at the articles you provided, and I noted, without surprise, that
they omitted a very key detail: laser efficiency. In typical everyday
usage, lasers are not very efficient. Even in high tech uses, such as
-Original Message-
From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On
Behalf Of Keith Henson
Sent: Tuesday, November 02, 2010 2:28 PM
To: brin-l@mccmedia.com
Subject: Energy projects was Underwater mortgages and the economy
On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Dan
Dan said:
In typical everyday usage, lasers are not very efficient. Even in high tech
uses, such as inertia fusion, particle beams are much more efficient: about
12% vs. about 1%, back when inertia fusion was big back in the '80s.
High pulse energy, high repetition rate diode-pumped solid
High pulse energy, high repetition rate diode-pumped solid state lasers now
have an efficiency of around 10%.
OK, that's a lot better than when I was kicking around inertia fusion.
Factors of 5-10 (it might have been as much as 2% efficient back in 1980)
every 30 years is nothing to sneeze at,
