Military Green Laser Pointer

This extremely powerful Green Laser Pointer is visible over 2 miles
away. Its perfect for pointing at starts and planets. The green beam is
actually visible through the air.

www.GreenLazer.com

On 12 Apr 2005 10:43:04 -0700, postulated
:
This extremely powerful Green Laser Pointer is visible over 2 miles
away. Its perfect for pointing at starts and planets. The green beam is
actually visible through the air.

....and just why would someone want to point a laser at a " start"?

Those things can cause temporary blindness and should be banned.

Greasy Rider© @invalid.com wrote:

Those things can cause temporary blindness and should be banned.

They also have the reported ability to be directed, hand-held, into the
cockpits of flying aircraft for seconds at a time.

(And anyone who believes that should try holding the dot on a leaf a
quarter mile away to see how well they do.)

Hysteria aside for just a moment, have a read of ...

http://www.equipped.org/lasers_airliners.htm


"Noah Little" wrote in message
...
Greasy Rider© @invalid.com wrote:

Those things can cause temporary blindness and should be banned.

They also have the reported ability to be directed, hand-held, into the
cockpits of flying aircraft for seconds at a time.

(And anyone who believes that should try holding the dot on a leaf a
quarter mile away to see how well they do.)

"Cockpit Colin" wrote:

Hysteria aside for just a moment, have a read of ...

http://www.equipped.org/lasers_airliners.htm

Interesting and reasonable...thanks...

--

--Gord
(use gordon in email)

"Without detonation, your car won't
move. That's what makes engines go".

"In my car, the high octane fuel detonates
better than the lower octane grades.
Fortunately for me, it doesn't PREVENT DETONATION".

-Burnore.

For what it's worth, I own one of the green variety - it's great for
pointing out starts etc at night.

My feeling is that if someone shined in the cockpit from (at least) 1 or 2
miles away, ...

(a) It would give me a bit of a fright - be damned annoying, but not
damaging - possibly causing a precautionary go-around at worst.

(b) Being that the beam is visable, it should be possible to give a
pretty accurate description of where it came from.

(c) Unless you mounted it mechanically, it would be pretty hard to keep
it shining in a cockpit.

Given the current talk on the topic I'm tempted to setup a controlled test
(with an additional safety pilot) where I'll get someone to shine it at me
(perhaps from the tower) during an approach in a GA aircraft.

Cockpit Colin wrote:
For what it's worth, I own one of the green variety - it's great for
pointing out starts etc at night.

My feeling is that if someone shined in the cockpit from (at least) 1 or 2
miles away, ...

(a) It would give me a bit of a fright - be damned annoying, but not
damaging - possibly causing a precautionary go-around at worst.

While it is almost impossible to cause permanent damage (pretty much
the definition of class IIIa), it might ruin your night vision for a
few moments or more. If it was an innopportune time plus a panicky
pilot, this could cause worse than a precautionary go-around.
Realistically, that is unlikely.

Cockpit Colin wrote:
(c) Unless you mounted it mechanically, it would be pretty hard to keep
it shining in a cockpit.

And if you did mount it mechanically, it would be pretty hard to keep it
shining in a cockpit. :-)

(Point being, getting more than a momentary "flash" visible to a pilot
would require more sophistication than is available to the average
backyard laser-waver.)
--
Noah

"Cockpit Colin" wrote:

For what it's worth, I own one of the green variety - it's great for
pointing out starts etc at night.

My feeling is that if someone shined in the cockpit from (at least) 1 or 2
miles away, ...

(a) It would give me a bit of a fright - be damned annoying, but not
damaging - possibly causing a precautionary go-around at worst.

(b) Being that the beam is visable, it should be possible to give a
pretty accurate description of where it came from.

(c) Unless you mounted it mechanically, it would be pretty hard to keep
it shining in a cockpit.

Given the current talk on the topic I'm tempted to setup a controlled test
(with an additional safety pilot) where I'll get someone to shine it at me
(perhaps from the tower) during an approach in a GA aircraft.

FYI, I'm quite sure that a Canadian Armed Forces helicopter pilot
suffered some eye damage from being hit by a powerful laser from
a Russian trawler on the West coast several years ago. It was
hushed up pretty quick but I'm fairly sure of the info.

--

--Gord
(use gordon in email)

"Without detonation, your car won't
move. That's what makes engines go".

"In my car, the high octane fuel detonates
better than the lower octane grades.
Fortunately for me, it doesn't PREVENT DETONATION".

-Burnore.

Yes, Detonation is a normal condition and
it occurs every time you have ignition,
you really need to get over that!

-Josh

dano wrote:
In article ,
Gord Beaman wrote:


"Cockpit Colin" wrote:


Hysteria aside for just a moment, have a read of ...

http://www.equipped.org/lasers_airliners.htm


Interesting and reasonable...thanks...


Right up until the line where the author states:

"More recently, the media has taken note of somewhat more powerful
lasers, up in the area of 20 Mw, that can be obtained for less than
$1000, which has again ignited fears."

Um, a 20 megawatt laser is going to ignite more than just fear. It's
also going to ignite steel armor and maybe even titanium.

And it's going to need at least an industrial strength nuclear reactor
to run (assume approx. 1% efficiency, so that a 20 Mw laser will need at
least 2,000 Mw electrical power source. That's 2 gigawatts.

So would a 12.1Mw laser require 1.21 gigawatts?

Maybe they misprinted 20mW as 20Mw, since there is an earlier
reference to 5mW. The article is pretty sloppy in it's use of units.
The abbreviation is W not w, I don't think w stands for anything.
Capital M is short for mega (million) and lowercase m is milli (one
thousandth). Quite a few orders of magnitude!