Since at least the 1980s, many leading aerospace laboratories have explored the concept of "energy deposition" in order to reduce drag. This concept involves beaming energy in the form of laser filaments, electric arcs, or microwave radiation along the leading edges or just in front of an aircraft in order to condition the air to be more conducive to high-speed flight.
It's really cool stuff, straight up science fiction, we're living in the future and all that.
Buuuut wouldn't it be nice if all that Sciencing that is figuring out how to tightly control plasma in the most extreme of conditions was applied to something like, say, developing fusion reactors to solve our existential energy problems instead of making faster boom-booms that rain Revelations-style death and destruction down from the heavens?
I mean, don't get me wrong, some technologies can just be weaponized no matter what so bits of the fusion plasma research would still get siphoned off into some black budget somewhere. Let's be realistic here. But wouldn't it be nice if the knowledge trickle-down was going in the direction of solve-our-big-problems first, then worry about the self-apocalyptic boom-booms?
Since at least the 1980s, many leading aerospace laboratories have explored the concept of "energy deposition" in order to reduce drag. This concept involves beaming energy in the form of laser filaments, electric arcs, or microwave radiation along the leading edges or just in front of an aircraft in order to condition the air to be more conducive to high-speed flight.