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Arodextoday at 12:36 PM1 replyview on HN

China already has a ground based laser array for military purposes (blinding more or less permanently spy satellites). Some think it could be upgraded to hard killing satellites, which I don't think is yet possible (the amount of energy to burn a sat is also enough to ionise air and thus waste and disperse the laser's energy), but with something heavily constrained by heat dissipation like an orbital datacenter, that last array could overload it and fry it...


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fc417fc802today at 1:38 PM

> the amount of energy to burn a sat is also enough to ionise air and thus waste and disperse the laser's energy

Why would you use a single beam? Place them far enough apart that they don't begin to converge until the atmosphere has thinned out.