Space-based chemical laser weapon (Rockwell, 1978)

Tom triangulates the classified laser-weapon design from three unclassified sources — Air Force 50 MW superconducting generator program, chemical laser efficiency at 10%, and Professor Bowen's one-meter potassium-chloride window forging at Lincoln Lab. Friend at Rockwell confirms the figure and the cargo-bay fit. Used to argue the shuttle's real purpose was military.

I had figured out through three different things that the power of a space-based laser weapon was five megawatts. The Air Force was trying to get a 50 megawatt superconducting generator, and I'd worked on superconductivity in the early 70s. The lasers — the chemical lasers — were about 10 percent efficient. I can multiply 50 by 0.1 and come up with five megawatts as the laser power. Professor Bowen was working on one-meter-diameter laser windows for Lincoln Laboratory, forging these things out of potassium chloride. No one had ever tried to make very high purity, low imperfection — no dislocations or voids — things of potassium fluoride and potassium chloride and cesium chloride. No one had ever tried to do that before. That's because the wavelength of the laser — this was transparent to that particular wavelength. You could look in the literature and find the damage threshold per square centimeter of laser power that you could go through it. You could multiply it by one meter, which is what he was trying to do — separate contract — put the two together and come up with five megawatts. And then there was something else, I don't remember what the other one was.