white sands missile range

In a recent test at the White Sands Missile Range, a specially equipped C-130 plane fried a parked truck with a powerful laser. And while we still haven't seen evidence of the laser "defeating" a ground target, as Boeing puts it, a video of it scorching a direct hit on the hood of a truck is still pretty amazing.

On day two of the 2007 X Prize Cup, between dealing with Armadillo Aerospaces faltering attempts to win the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge and serving as master of ceremonies for the days events, X Prize founder Peter Diamandis took a few minutes to talk to PopSci about the future of his organizations marquee event. Read the interview after the jump.—Seth Fletcher

Image Courtesy Zero-Gravity Corp

For a video of the laser in action, jump to the third page of the article.