X-ray lasers and Project Excalibur

[Maury Markowitz]

Hi everyone,

I'm getting ready to A-class the article on Project Excalibur, the SDI-era x-ray laser efforts at LLNL. If anyone is interested in this topic, I'd love your comments on it!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Excalibur

I am particularly concerned that the sources I have access to in the public, especially the more "historical overview" type, are generally slanted against the project. There appear to be two ways to read the entire history:

1) the system never worked and they were fooling themselves because of instrumentation errors

2) the system worked, but was not powerful/effective/practical enough to be useful as a weapon

So if anyone knows of sources that are more favourable to the program, ones written after it when this stuff became public, I'd love to see it!

 

[sferrin]

I'm assuming you've read Star Warriors?

https://www.amazon.com/Star-Warriors-Penetrating-Scientists-Weaponry/dp/0788151150

(I was a bit surprised that the chief scientist behind the X-ray laser seemed to be anti-defense, and was hoping to see it used for medical purposes.)

 

[Maury Markowitz]

Yeah, I did read that. It is interesting to contrast that book with his next one on the topic, Teller's War. Teller's War basically puts all of SDI on Teller's overselling of Excalibur during the 81/82 time-frame. But there are many who disagree with that, not the lest of which was Teller. That's why I have that section at the end, because I think Broad's view needs some context.

 

[blackstar]

Hi everyone,

I'm getting ready to A-class the article on Project Excalibur,

What does "A-class" an article mean?