Is a Laser Data Link 1.5 Million Kilometers Feasible?

An anonymous reader writes "On the Canary Islands last week, a team from Oerlikon Space demonstrated the feasibility of a laser link across a distance of 1.5 million kilometers for the first time ever. In the future, laser links like this one will be able to transmit data across huge distances through the universe far more rapidly and efficiently than is possible using conventional radio links today."

Comments

One important warning

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not look into laser with remaining eye.

Re:Never saw this coming

[erroneus]

I'm not sure the space-technology people will be using "aim." If anything, I'd suspect they'd lean to something OSS like "Pidgin."

Canary Islands?

[j-stroy]

Are there sharks there or something?

"far more rapidly"

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Because lasers travel at least 42 times as fast as radio waves!

unfortunately

[LM741N]

They will all stop at the last mile, rendering the project useless.

Re:Targeting that is going to be a bitch.

[meringuoid]

now try to do the math on all of the floating bodies and the effect of the gravity from neighboring quasars and other space phenomena.

If an object 1.5 million kilometres away has a neighbouring quasar, you have bigger worries than communication.

Re:Never saw this coming

[ricosalomar]

...proven with radio, that would seem good enough for me.

I agree. We should stop all development and research in this area immediately.

Is there anything else that people are working on that you don't see a need to improve? They should have checked with you first, I guess.

If we start shining huge lasers into space

[caluml]

If we start shining huge lasers into space, we're going to end up accidentally blinding aliens. Which might be good (if they're chest-explody types), or bad (if they're hot sex-starved space-babes). Your call.

Re:A bit exaggerated?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I dunno, I think if they modulated the laser to the harmonic frequency of dilithium they could route the message through a subspace channel on a tachyon carrier wave. This is pretty elementary stuff.

Re:Never saw this coming

[Kinthelt]

It's okay. Even NASA confuses SI with Imperial measurements.