It's mainly because I got ninja'd.
I was replying to this:
EDIT: And lenses also absorb some of the light due to imperfections.

Not necessarily, you could use a parabolic mirror.

But, this raises the question. Would you want a diffuse beam, or a pinpoint? I would think it would be more efficient that at the very end, on receiving, you'd want it diffuse to make the most of the surface area of your collection medium. I suppose in the meantime it'd be easier to control if it was thin, so perhaps you'd have refocusing devices during transfer, leading up to a diffuser.[/speculation without even a wikischolar degree]

Well, your overall beam you want to be as narrow as possible, because the longer distance it travels (without refocusing) the more diffuse it will end up being.

If you have a very specific lens width at a very specific distance, you can tightly refocus a diffuse beam back into a narrow one, and then have it sent on again for the next X distance.

Laser powered devices do work, as shown. Coincidentally, the article mentions space elevators, another important technology.
Now that we have object-centric Lua, perhaps a space elevator could be made. All rockets with a certain presetname would be moved to the center of the space elevator column, dropped down to the station, forced to unload (you can do that in Lua, right?), then moved back up.

Addendum: Antimatter in lightning.

A space elevator is one thing, but the simple fact is that the mass/energy equation does not work when lifting things off Earth. You have to impart some 17000 miles per hour of lateral motion to put an object in sustained freefall, which is REALLY not efficient.

Which is why producing spaceborne objects in space to explore space is going to be the first step of true space exploration.

so i assume we need to colonize a low gravity planet to mine materials off of? and then we can go from there?

Not really, as lower gravity planets would have less matter to mine.
Its good that the laser powered devices work well enough now. Imagine it with near-100% photovoltaic conversion. Currently, the amount of energy in the lasers must have been pretty huge.

so would an asteroid be better? i just think a planet would be easier to build a refinery and factory? i mean sticking that all into a spaceship sounds EXPENSIVE as hell.

When you're talking about mining a planet to pieces I dont think money comes into the equation too much, but i suppose asteroid belts would also be acceptable mining platforms.

Thought you guys might like this little weapon idea. The name alone is quite something:

Rods from God

An orbital kinetic strike weapon? That thing doesn't even need propellant, it can simply let the darts fall, and they'll do a shitload of damage, assuming they have some sort of guidance system.

Ah yes, Project THOR. Good stuff. The first country that can enact Project THOR will RULE the world.

Well, Thoristan ain't teh boss yet...

That's because they don't yet have an effiecient, plausible space elevator running yet.

"Ruling the world" isn't really a matter of weaponry anymore - even less a matter of large scale weaponry. Even with the recent advances in anti-ICBM technology, mutually assured destruction is still kind of a big deal. Simply put: having a new bigger bomb doesn't matter when the enemy still has enough to wipe you out enough.

Rather than a means of "ruling the world", I'm guessing Rods from God would serve as really expensive bunker busters.

It might have some use in bolstering mutually assured destruction related deterrnace. Although a large tungstan jart dropped from orbit is probably harder to intercept than a missile, this only makes getting the other guy a surer thing. It doesn't promise that their arsenal won't get to you. In this way, a country which developed this technology would not be able to threaten other countries from developing it themselves. Because they're harder to intercept, a world with many nations in possession of Rods from God could enjoy a heightened sense of deternece.

On the con-side: no radiation, so we would unfortunetly never get to have superpowers.