Originally posted by onlyinmydreams
PS: Though there was a star wars proposal that would utilize atomic blasts that had been 'aimed' at ICBMs
Yes, it was called the "pumped X Ray laser".
THE concept for x-ray lasers goes back to the 1970s, when physicists realized that laser beams amplified with ions would have much higher energies
than beams amplified using gases. Nuclear explosions were even envisioned as a power supply for these high-energy lasers. That vision became a reality
at the time of the Strategic Defense Initiative of the 1980s, when x-ray laser beams initiated by nuclear explosives were generated underground at the
Nevada Test Site. Livermore's Novette, the precursor of the Nova laser, was used for the first laboratory demonstration of an x-ray laser in 1984.
www.llnl.gov...