Posthuman Blues

Military's Energy-Beam Weapons Delayed

"A separate branch of directed-energy research involves bigger, badder beams: lasers that could obliterate targets tens of miles away from ships or planes. Such a strike would be so surgical that, as some designers put it at a recent conference here, the military could plausibly deny responsibility."

What? The military denying responsibility? They'd never do such a thing!

While we're playing Buck Rogers, why not apply some of this directed energy research to studying power satellites? For example, an orbiting solar farm could beam microwaves to ground-based stations, where their energy could be used to cleanly power entire cities.

Call me crazy, but this strikes me as a worthy goal that just might save more lives than all the bad-ass death-rays in the world.