/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10074981

Also in this case, measuring things in megawatts is insufficient. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was equivalent to about 15,000 tons of TNT which is equivalent to 62 trillion watts or 62 thousand megawatts. For comparison the modern W-87 has about 475,000 tons of TNT which is about 2 quadrillion watts; and since the W-87 was designed to be deployed as a MIRV (exactly the type of vehicle best suited for orbital laser weaponry), there'd be deployed in groups of ten totaling a combined 4,750,000 tons of TNT and 20 quadrillion watts.

This is a huge amount of energy, for comparison the world only uses about 18 billion watts every year so the combined explosions would be about one thousand times larger than all of the electrical energy produced by mankind ever.