from Hacker News

China makes advances in laser-propelled submarines

by nitin-pai on 4/22/24, 8:16 AM with 18 comments

• by a4000 on 4/23/24, 5:24 AM

  It's worth pointing out that this is authored by Stephen Chen who is a bit of a joke in defence news circles with a never ending supply of articles about how China has all these amazing weapons and technological advances that render the US helpless in comparison and there is one every few days or so. https://www.scmp.com/author/stephen-chen

• by Euphorbium on 4/22/24, 9:58 AM

  This seemed like science fiction to me, but aparently it is real, the technology was introduced in a 2009 paper cited 20 times https://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S02179849100...

• by gus_massa on 4/22/24, 9:43 PM

  > Design can produce almost as much thrust as a commercial jet engine,

  But does it have as much thrust as a normal submarine engine?

• by ano-ther on 4/22/24, 9:08 AM

  According to the article this uses plasma explosions and a working medium of metal particles.

  Wouldn’t both lead to easier traceability (sound, metal)?

• by slowmovintarget on 4/22/24, 5:30 PM

  The very end of the article talks about "green shipping" but it seems like this propulsion method would produce crazy levels of heat. Wouldn't that have adverse impact?

• by Havoc on 4/22/24, 10:50 AM

  The whole bubbles and pulsing doesn’t sound particularly silent

• by sharpshadow on 4/22/24, 11:50 AM

  Wow that is super awesome and could be used for underwater weapons as well.

  In combination with propellers for quick acceleration it should work too.