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Big Freakin' Laser Beams In Space
schnippy writes "Esquire is running an interesting article on the work on adaptive optics and directed energy being done at the U.S. Air Force's Starfire Optical Observatory. This facility was the subject of a New York Times article earlier this year which suspected the facility was conducting anti-satellite weapons research under the cover of astronomy."
Any word on how we're going to get sharks up there?
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Maybe they are just planning on giving astronauts laser eye surgery from the ground.
Hey, guys. Big gulps, huh? Cool. All right! Well, see ya later.
Finally, we have a weapon capable of defeating the Brotherhood of Nod.
http://www.vilos.com/lasers/lasers-howto.html
:-(
That's all you need to build a fire-starting laser out of a DVDRW.
He leaves off some of the important details, though
Also, my research suggests this is illegal.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
They are soo sharking Congress on that one.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
We see through a glass darkly--somewhat like trying to spy on beauty through textured-glass shower doors.
Ok, forget space, I want a laser-telescope-camera at home right now if it can see through next-doors shower door.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
You can use it for star-gazing... or weaponize it without much effort. It's just the nature of the beast.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
When we see smaller sharks, of course.
Water goes in cargo container, cargo container goes in rocket, shark goes in water. Our shark.
We're gonna need a bigger rocket.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
I actually worked for a company that a did a lot of the initial work in designing the storage system used at StarFire (which had some pretty nasty data capture requirements because of the highly "bursty" nature of the data capture.) From what I understood of the limited amount we were told the idea was to use an array of smaller optical telescopes and image analysis software to create a "mosaic" of the overall image that was corrected for atmospheric distortion. While nothing was said at the time, the implication was that this was for ABM, not anti-satellite, i.e. it was to make easier to shoot something down with a laser inside the atmosphere. Of course, the trick was not producing the image per-se, but producing it fast enough to be useful as part of a firing solution, i,.e a crystal clear shot of the target that takes 5 minutes to produce is of limited utility :-)
Of course the technology has a number of potential uses, both military and non-military, but that's true of just about any large hi-tech experiment. Given that StarFire is run and funded by the USAF (not NASA or a University institute like JPL), I don't think should come as any great surprise that they are rather more interested in it's military applications.
Hmm... back when I was a graduate student at Penn State in the 90's, we could often see the remote sensing teams testing LIDAR (think RADAR, but with laser light). The laser was quite powerful, seemed to extend all the way up to the heavens, and could be seen for miles around.
Perhaps I'm just a bit jaded that them "city folks" (aka The New York Times) seems to think that anyone beaming a laser into the sky must want to destroy stuff.
Hrmpth. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LIDAR
Good...I think we were all pretty tired of Pyongyang sitting there, all fraction-like. Or maybe it's their nuclear shenanigans we're tired of. Either way, I'm glad it's whole again.
Isn't that a Men's clothing magazine? Since when do we get technology information from Esquire? That's like going to Dr. Dobbs looking for a pie recipe or Car and Driver for gardening tips.
--- Just another Code-Monkey
If the USAF uses Starfire, they're going to go out of mana pretty quickly. I hope they have a lot of MP/5 and know when to use that Innervate.
I visited the Starfire facility in the mid-'90s. Now, it seems to me that if they'd let me, a long-haired hippie-lookin' mofo who's only reason for being there was I was schtooping the Colonel's daughter and had mentioned in small talk with him that I was interested in lasers and built that nitrogen job out of Scientific American in high school, it can't be that classified. It's not like they said anything about keep your mouth shut or made me sign anything. We did pass through a gate guarded by some serious lookin' dudes who pointed their rifles at me, but they didn't even take my name that I recall.
After we got to the top of the mountain, we went into the main building. There were a couple of dudes in suits there. I was introduced, but I don't remember who they were. Not sure if they were Congressional types or Pentagon guys or what, but the people who worked there were nice to them so I tried to be on my best behavior. We got a short lecture about the project and some of the photos they had produced were handed around.
In case you didn't RTFA, the purpose of Starfire is to use a projected laser dot to configure an adaptive-optics mirror to compensate for atmospheric distortion and allow for better terrestrial astronomy. It works pretty damn good too. The photos I saw were very impressive. Better than Hubble in some cases, which they were justifiably very proud of. They sure were a helluva lot cheaper to get than Hubble photos.
After the lecture we got a tour of the facility. There were several telescopes on the mountain, a couple of which were capable of projecting a laser. The main 'scope had a really neat setup where they could have several experiments going at once and rotate a mirror to pick which one went up the tube. Other than that there were the optical experiment tables, the adaptive-optics setup, the imaging system, and several different kinds of lasers of varying impressive powers.
Next we went into the main dome. We were informed that the main telescope could depress below 0 degrees and the dome could be lowered in 30 seconds, and raised in two minutes by machine, or ten minutes if the hand cranks had to be employed. At the end of the telescope I spotted a disc with "Raytheon" on it. I casually asked, "What's the radar for?"
"To make sure there are no aircraft entering the beam path," the tour guide replied. The suit dudes were very surprised by my question so I mostly shut up for the rest of the tour. We then exited the platform so they could open the dome and slew the telescope.
Next came the control room. There were a bunch of guys in there, some in uniform and some in civvies. The were all business and didn't say much. They showed us the computer that had the ephemeris of every object in orbit down to the size of a quarter. All the computers were UNIX and X Windows, FYI. As a software guy, I thought the interface left something to be desired, but that's just me. Tracking an object with the 'scope was as simple as clicking on the desired target. We watched the 'scope slew through a CCTV monitor located near the target computer. Sadly, conditions were unfavorable for a test firing, so I didn't get to see the big mother fire.
Last they took us down to the "shack" where the guide-star laser was produced and sent through a smaller scope. The guys in here were friendlier, hippie/scientist types. I rapped with them a little while the brass talked amongst themselves. They were really excited about their laser because it was very powerful and very yellow, which worked out good for their astronomy.
Understand, the men who worked on this project never, ever said anything about it's use as a weapon. They always talked about it in terms of the astronomy. They had a nice telescope with a honkin' big laser under it, a radar on the front of it, and a computer that could track the 'scope on every object in orbit, up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, but officially the fact that Starfire could be used as a weapon never occurred to them