RE: Energy projects was Underwater mortgages and the economy

>High pulse energy, high repetition rate diode-pumped solid state lasers now
>have an efficiency of around 10%.

OK, that's a lot better than when I was kicking around inertia fusion.
Factors of 5-10 (it might have been as much as 2% efficient back in 1980)
every 30 years is nothing to sneeze at, but is still not near Moore's
law...while synthetic biology is presently beating Moore's law (how long
they can keep this up, I don't know, but we haven't gotten to the steep part
of the cost curve that happens before the wall yet).  

But, what I've read on laser powered rockets, its burning stuff off rockets
by hitting them with a laser just right. The article that argues for it:

http://htyp.org/Hundred_dollars_a_kg

sure seems like Piccard engineering to me.

Dan M.