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To: Snowshoe who wrote (17568)	5/18/1998 10:40:00 PM
From: Zeev Hed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25960

Greg, an interesting idea. I had the same idea some twenty years ago and went through the process of calculating the energy requirement for laser drilling. I came so far on the losing side (relative the Hughs' diamonds bits), that I gave up. Of course at the time, we did not have excimer lasers and my calculations were based on chemical lasers (CO(2) and Iodine lasers) which were quite inefficient (about 3% conversion of electricity to photons flux), but I doubt that even at 10% efficiency we will get fast. Laser drilling will have to "invest" the heat of fusion and of evaporation of the mass involved, on top of the specific heat times about 2500 C the average (conservative) evaporation temperature of rocks. Mechanical diamond drilling does not even require the energy to raise the rock temperature to its melting point. Other problems I had was preventing the gaseous species from cooling off on the colder walls on their way out and plugging the hole, or absorbing the beam when pumped out, but that is another story. Good luck on your search. Zeev

To: Snowshoe who wrote (17568)	5/19/1998 11:58:00 PM
From: Alan Gallaspy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25960

re: Laser drilled wells. Its not going to happen. In order to keep the oil/gas/water from shooting out of the hole out of control (know in the business as a blowout), one needs to keep the borehole stuffed full of a liquid of the appropriate density to maintain downhole hydrostatic pressure. You are not going to vaporize rocks with a laser in this kind of environment. We will continue to keep on grinding away with mechanical bits on the end of a pipe like we have been for the foreseeable future.