“It’s a lot easier to send a power beam directly up or down relative to the ground because there is so much less atmosphere to fight through,” Jaffe explains. “For PRAD, we wanted to test under the maximum impact of atmospheric effects.”

Super impressive! My only complain is that this was done at the White Sounds desert in New Mexico, at over 1200 meters of elevation. For maximum impact they should have done it in Florida on a hot humid day