Laser beams being aimed at airliners?

"Nomen Nescio" ] wrote in message
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From: "Happy Dog"

Cite? Tens of thousands of microphones connected to a central processing
facility? A gunshot going off a mile away from a controlled intersection
won't be heard over the traffic noise in most cases. Not to mention jet
aircraft noise. Response time will be forever.

Fourier analysis?
Admittedly, it would take some rather fast processors.

A system of this type is already in use in some places. It only needs a
few strategically placed mikes, though.
--
Jim in NC

A man has been arrested and charged for the recent laser beam being
aimed into a landing airplane's cockpit in New Jersey.

See:
http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey...6903307830.xml

After reading the article, a couple of things are of interest: The
laser is called a "Jasper Laser" and was bought from a company in
Oregon over the internet. The laser was described as cigar sized and
had a range of up to 25,000 feet.

Second, the man in my opinion seems immature. He initially blamed his
7 year old daughter for the incidents. After the initial incident in
which a landing Cessna Citation reported having the laser beamed into
their cockpit while approaching Teterboro at 3,000 feet, a police
helicopter was sent to the likely area to look around. The man, David
Banach, 38, beamed it too. Not a smart move.

The police helicopter responded by targeting the house with it's
floodlight, whereupon local police surrounded the house in large
numbers.

His lawyer denied that there was any willful misconduct, although it's
difficult for me to understand how else one might interpret his
actions. She also criticized the government for prosecuting her
client under the Patriot Act. Think about it for a moment though, who
in his or her right mind would intentionally beam something known to
cause temporary blindness at anyone, let alone the cockpit of a
landing airplane regardless the size?

US District Attorney Christopher J. Christie is quoted as saying:"We
have to send a clear message to the public that there is no harmless
mischief when it comes to airplanes, Mr. Banach's actions as alleged
in the criminal complaint put innocent lives at risk. That is illegal
and unacceptable." I agree with Mr. Christie.

The manufacturer of the laser pointer expressed regret that his
product had been used in such a manner.

Corky Scott

It seems that he was simply stupid and thoughtless. It's doubtful that
he knew that it would "flood the cockpit" with light. People think
lasers will just show a tiny dot even at a great distance.

Previous to his arrest I was thinking that the FBI should put out a
warning that shining lasers into cockpits would result in being charged
with the intent to murder x people (x = however many souls are on
board). But now I'm just shaking my head at his immaturity. He didn't
have the intent to hurt anyone, he was just showing off, not knowing it
was a really bad idea. Something any kid would probably do as well.

In article . com, wrote:

It seems that he was simply stupid and thoughtless. It's doubtful that
he knew that it would "flood the cockpit" with light. People think
lasers will just show a tiny dot even at a great distance.

Previous to his arrest I was thinking that the FBI should put out a
warning that shining lasers into cockpits would result in being charged
with the intent to murder x people (x = however many souls are on
board). But now I'm just shaking my head at his immaturity. He didn't
have the intent to hurt anyone, he was just showing off, not knowing it
was a really bad idea. Something any kid would probably do as well.

I don't believe it "flooded" anything with light. It's 5 mW. That's
0.005 Watt. So it will "flood" your cockpit with a lot less light than
your LED headlight. Which is not to mention the difficulty of hitting
a moving target from thousands of feet away with a hand-held pointer.
Any "flooding" would be very brief. The major problem would be
distraction, and if we're going after everyone distracting someone
operating a vehicle, I think we should lock up the people responsible
for those obnoxious animated roadside signs. Now *there's* an
anti-terrorism action I could endorse without reservation.

I think this is the typical incredible overreaction because "we have to
look like we're protecting the public." You might as well arrest some kids
that were throwing rocks in the river because an ocean liner might go
past.

Note that there's no way to tell whether this guy was involved in the
Citation incident, by the way. But "flooding the cockpit with light"
from a slant range of over a mile away seems like it would require
something with a much higher output. Maybe there's someone out
there with an industrial laser (or more likely, a spotlight).

Mike Beede

That's
0.005 Watt. So it will "flood" your cockpit with a lot less light than
your LED headlight.

This may be true but a laser straight out of the box is pretty
focused, and put a simple lens in front of it and you can keep the
beam even tighter. There may not be that many photons involved, but
they are all coming from the same direction, and that does count for
something. (somebody posted about a five digree divergence, the
lasers I've seen are all much tighter than that.)

I don't know whether it counts for the alleged problems, but there is
a nontrivial difference betweem laser light and the diode in your
headband.

Jose
--
Money: What you need when you run out of brains.
for Email, make the obvious change in the address.

On Thu, 06 Jan 2005 03:52:02 GMT, Jose
wrote in ::

There may not be that many photons involved, but
they are all coming from the same direction, and that does count for
something.

If I'm not mistaken, coherent laser light is all in phase. Doesn't
that cause it to have more energy?

"Jose" wrote in message

0.005 Watt. So it will "flood" your cockpit with a lot less light than
your LED headlight.

This may be true but a laser straight out of the box is pretty focused,
and put a simple lens in front of it and you can keep the beam even
tighter.

Not really. You can use a beam telescope to help a bit. But the problem is
more one of diffusion by the atmosphere than divergence.

There may not be that many photons involved, but they are all coming from
the same direction, and that does count for something.

I assume you mean directed at the same point. In this case, light is acting
like a bunch of particles. It would be the same from a flashlight though.

(somebody posted about a five digree divergence, the lasers I've seen are
all much tighter than that.)

Much. 1 millirad


moo

In article , Jose wrote:

I don't know whether it counts for the alleged problems, but there is
a nontrivial difference betweem laser light and the diode in your
headband.

Yes, the nontrivial differences are that my headband is around a thousand
times closer and puts out a hundred times as much energy.
We're not talking about a precision instrument here. How big a circle would
be illuminated at 5000 feet? If it spreads even 0.01 degree it's over a foot
in diameter. 5 mW spread over a couple square feet? I'm extremely
skeptical of this. Extremely.

Mike Beede

I'm just shaking my head at his immaturity. He didn't
have the intent to hurt anyone, he was just showing off, not knowing it
was a really bad idea.

I know it's an old post, but I disagree and I'm glad they threw the book at
that weenie. He tried to blame it on his kid, he'd seen the stories about
concerns for safety, and he did konw it was a bad idea but he still did it,
deliberately. Numerous copycats since have started doing the same thing.

Sure, it's a prank for most, just like dropping rocks off the bridge over the
freeway. But it's stupid, and malicious, and there's no useful or positive
purpose for doing it. A woman died last year in Council Bluffs when teens were
dropping landscaping bricks off a bridge and one went through the window of a
van driving by underneath and caught her in the head. They didn't intend to
hurt anyone either.

"StellaStar" wrote in message
I'm just shaking my head at his immaturity. He didn't
have the intent to hurt anyone, he was just showing off, not knowing it
was a really bad idea.

I know it's an old post, but I disagree and I'm glad they threw the book
at
that weenie. He tried to blame it on his kid, he'd seen the stories about
concerns for safety, and he did konw it was a bad idea but he still did
it,
deliberately.

He'll be lots of use to his kid when he's in prison. He didn't pose a
threat to anyone. Don't believe the hype.

moo