After the early trials and errors of the Reagan era strategic missile defense demonstrated the difficulty of hitting a moving object hundreds of miles away was at that time unfeasible, the subsequent fiber optic build out of the internet in the 1990s and 2000s threw billions of dollars to get solid quantifiable results with lasers in a broad spectrum of uses using low power finely tuned and easily achieved tasks.
The prism on the cover of a Pink Floyd album illustrates what many microlasers converging into a single beam showed what might be possible.
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