<font color="yellow">There was a lot to be learned. Several rooms of equipment scaled up to sevreal buildings surrounded by equipment scaled down to fit in a 747 with a guiding system. </font><br /><br /><br />Who in here remember how big a mainframe was when built with vacuum tubes? <img src="/images/icons/smile.gif" /><br /><br />Laser technologies will only get better, more compact and portable in the future. I would strongly recommend any aspiring future engineers to learn as much as they can about laser, optics, plasma flow regimes, and nuclear physics because that's where the future is heading. <br /><br />Josh made a good point about future soldiers arm with laser rather than a rifle. Anyone who has play with a laser pointer should be amaze with how light travels through space with ease. Now imagine those lights are powerful enough to punch holes thru metals. <img src="/images/icons/crazy.gif" /><br /><br />Laser are also extremely useful in scientific research. It opened up a whole field of non-intrusive diagnostics. We've used it to diagnostic the combustion process inside of rocket combustion chamber, sample exit species for combustion efficiency measurements, etc. In the future, laser propulsion will soon be here fast enough for launch vehicles.<br /><br />Oh and whoever said that, just because ABL is for military application therefore does not belong on the M & L is full of it. If that's the case, then we should remove 80% of posts of relevant value from M & L.<br /> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> </div>