Re: Random SF Science Questions
Darn, missed that. Oops. Thanks for pointing it out for me. I'd like to see his reasoning for the debris clearance time though. I think he may be overestimating the speed with which stuff moves, but it's nearly a decade since I worked with laser vaporization, so my memory is probably playing tricks on me (that and I was aiming at something not very flesh-like).
A potentially nasty problem with laser weapons is if you know the frequency and there is a commonly available gas which absorbs there, your opponents with the slug-throwers have a one way shield, so choose your frequency carefully. To take a silly example, no one will build a deadly fluorine excimer weapon lasing at 157 nm for use on earth. Both water vapor and oxygen absorb strongly at these wavelengths, so the range would be very, very limited.