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Big Freakin' Laser Beams In Space

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the sharks-next-on-the-docket dept.

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."

5 of 142 comments (clear)

  1. Any word... by GillBates0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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
    1. Re:Any word... by lymond01 · · Score: 5, Funny

      If you'd paid attention to previous Slashdot discussions:

      The space elevator will move too slowly to keep living things from being irradiated by the Van Allen belt surrounding the Earth. The solution is to create a passenger compartment inside a cargo container filled with water, which is a terrific absorber of energy, which in turn can house the sharks.

      Elementary, really...

  2. GDI anyone? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Finally, we have a weapon capable of defeating the Brotherhood of Nod.

  3. It's a USAF project, no s**t it's military!!! by NSIM · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  4. Lasers! Weapons! Outerspace! by adageable · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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