01-13-2017, 12:55 AM
Well - I do kind of see the point about not passing muster for military use. It might not be 100% accurate, but I do see the point. Energy weapons require bigga-watts of power to do their job. Mashing all that energy into a small volume.... We have those objects now - they are called "bombs". When it comes to mashing huge amounts of power into a small pistol magazine, eventually it becomes dangerous for the soldier carrying it, and you'd be better off with a slug-thrower and a grenade. On his sci-fi science episode about lightsabers, Michio Kaku went over this and suggested the best use for such a device was to mail it to your enemy and hope that he turned it on.
OA tech that no one is advocating rewriting somewhat mitigates this, but there's kind of no sense bending over backwards to have a "laser gun" when a normal gun is cheaper, easier, just as effective if not more so, and less dangerous to operate. And when I say "normal gun" I'm not suggesting weapon system development stops - just that smacking someone upside the head with a hard object kind of never goes out of style as far as weapons are concerned.
OA weapons might fall into the category of "neither" - how about a "gun" that's actually your friend Walter's house. Walter is a modosophont synsect - you have him and his family over for dinner on Tuesdays, his wife, Maude is really good at Parcheesi. When you point Walter's house at someone and ring the doorbell, Walter is trusting you that the person in view of his front door is a total piece of crap - and so Walter flies over there and bites him (delivering khaki goo, a cocktail of various poisons, an a few thousand brain eating amoebas - because f--- that guy). Maybe Walter's son, Eddie, is really good with computers - so, when you need to deal with a computer or a vec, you ring the doorbell and send Eddie. Eddie replaces their quantum encryption keys with your keys, allowing you to take control of said system.
OA tech that no one is advocating rewriting somewhat mitigates this, but there's kind of no sense bending over backwards to have a "laser gun" when a normal gun is cheaper, easier, just as effective if not more so, and less dangerous to operate. And when I say "normal gun" I'm not suggesting weapon system development stops - just that smacking someone upside the head with a hard object kind of never goes out of style as far as weapons are concerned.
OA weapons might fall into the category of "neither" - how about a "gun" that's actually your friend Walter's house. Walter is a modosophont synsect - you have him and his family over for dinner on Tuesdays, his wife, Maude is really good at Parcheesi. When you point Walter's house at someone and ring the doorbell, Walter is trusting you that the person in view of his front door is a total piece of crap - and so Walter flies over there and bites him (delivering khaki goo, a cocktail of various poisons, an a few thousand brain eating amoebas - because f--- that guy). Maybe Walter's son, Eddie, is really good with computers - so, when you need to deal with a computer or a vec, you ring the doorbell and send Eddie. Eddie replaces their quantum encryption keys with your keys, allowing you to take control of said system.