"Not in my book."
"Perhaps. But all the same, I think I should tell you a few technical details about the facility. Since you say you're familiar with its general workings, you probably know that its heart is a twenty-gigawatt laser we call the Cyclops. Using it, we can send a high-energy beam hundreds of miles into space without losing appreciable energy. Our plan is to use that beam of energy, which we can direct very accurately, to power a satellite launch vehicle."
"I understand that."
"Excellent," he said, as though encouraging a student. Then he pushed on. "In any case, the Cyclops itself is a repetitive-pulsed, free-electron laser, which means the computer can tune it continuously to the most energy-efficient wavelength, a crucial feature. It starts with an intense beam of electrons which it accelerates to high velocity, then passes through an array of magnets we call the 'wiggler.' Those magnets are arranged in a line but they alternate in polarity, which causes the electrons passing through to experience rapid variations in magnetic-field strength and direction. What happens is, the alternating magnetic field 'wiggles' the beam of electrons into a wave, causing them to emit a microwave pulse—which is itself then passed back and forth, gaining strength at every pass. Eventually it saturates at a level nearly equal to the power of Grand Coulee Dam, and then—"
"Maybe you ought to get to the point," Vance said, feeling he was receiving a college lecture. He used to give college lectures, for chrissake, in archaeology. Were they just as tedious? he suddenly wondered.
"Of course." He pushed on, oblivious. 'The whole operation is controlled by our Fujitsu supercomputer. The hardest part is getting the microwave pulses and the electron pulses to overlap perfectly in the wiggler. That part of the Cyclops, called the coaxial phase shifter, requires delicate fine-tuning. The alignment has to be critically adjusted, the focusing perfect, the cavity length—"
"Get back to the vehicle. I think I've heard all I need to know about the wonders of the Cyclops."
"Very well. The energy is focused, in bursts, from up there." He turned and pointed up the mountain. "That installation is a phased-array microwave transmission system, which delivers it to the spacecraft. To a port located on the sides of the vehicles down there. The port is a special heat-resistant crystal of synthetic diamond. Once inside, the beam is directed downward into the nozzle, where it strikes dry ice and creates plasma, producing thrust. The vehicle is single-stage-to-orbit."
"Nothing is burned." Vance had to admit it was a nifty idea. If you could do it.
“That's correct. The laser beam creates a shock wave, a burst of superheated gas moving at supersonic velocity out of the nozzle. By pulsing the beam, we form a detonation wave that hits the nozzle chamber and—"