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$10k Reward For Info On Anyone Who Points a Laser At Planes Goes Nationwide
coondoggie writes: "The FBI today said it was making national a pilot program it tried out in 12 locations earlier this year that offers up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of anyone who intentionally aims a laser at an aircraft. According to the FBI, the pilot locations have seen a 19% decrease in the number of reported laser-to-aircraft incidents. Those locations included: Albuquerque, Chicago, Cleveland, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia."
1) Aim laser pointer at my own plane, parked in a hangar. 2) Turn myself in for "intentionally aiming a laser at an aircraft" 3) Profit!
Real programmers use "copy con program.exe"
One Hundred BILLION dollars!
John
You'd think they'd have just put polarized glass in the cockpit by now if it were that big of a deal. Oh wait... that's right, it's not that big of a deal.
Why do we continue to allow things like this to get blown so far out of proportion that we end up sending 16yr olds to prison for something that never really had a chance to do harm to anyone in the first place? A landing aircraft is moving faster than freeway traffic at it's slowest. Without computer control and actuators there is no way a person could, by hand, hold a laser on a cockpit window for more than a tenth of a second. If a pilot is unable to land a plane after a flash of light that brief, we'd better start making lightening illegal because it's a hell of a lot brighter, and more common than a laser strike.
2) Offer to pay him $8K for pointing a laser pointer at a plane and going to jail.
3) Profit!
You could probably find a more erratic person willing to take less than $8K of the 10K, but I would imagine you'd want to deal with a fairly rational person who doesn't feel resentment towards you (i.e. for getting ripped off). The goal of this plan is to rip off the government and the tax payer, not the fall guy.
What the government should do, is offer $20K for turning in the orchestrator of a laser pointer arrest reward scheme.
I can't imagine it would have any real affect or we'd read about planes falling out of the sky left and right all over the world.
right? Right?
[...]offers up to $10,000 for information leading to the arrest of anyone who intentionally aims a laser at an aircraft.
Planes get lost, re-routed etc ALL the time.
Think a nightclub with laser advertising, plane flies overhead, or helicopter.
Can they be punished?
Major astronomical telescopes often use lasers for their adaptive optics systems. They coordinate with relevant authorities to insure they don't zap sensitive optics on satellites and post "plane spotters" outside so they can shut down the laser if a plane comes too close to the beam.
Of course, those lasers tend to be considerably more powerful (>5W) than handheld laser pointers (~5mW), so it might not be directly comparable, but I'd hope that any organization that is shooting lasers into the sky would have someone keeping an eye out for aircraft.
Why do the decision makers in this country have an insatiable urge to ruin everything for everyone by making needles, useless, delusion, meaningless legislation that makes our culture, our lives, our freedoms the governments issue, make normal every day illegal? It is so ludicrous, like one person stated, why do we have such a strange system in which 16 year olds, young, respectable people with futures going to jail for YEARS for stupid frivolous crap, this overly litigated country we live in now is becoming a nightmare, I read recently over FORTY-THOUSAND laws were passed last year alone, do you know what any of them are? I don't.
Laser advertising needs special permissions and is either focused at a billboard, wall, etc, or if aimed at the sky under permanent direct control of an expert and only permissible with similar restrictions as fireworks. Your question is stupid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
What the world is coming to now a days, lasers and aircraft.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm an airline pilot who has been lased three times, and I'm probably one of the only pilots in the country to have also earned a degree as a laser technician. With these credentials I was chosen to represent my airline at the ALPA Laser Illumination Conference in 2011. http://laserconference.alpa.or... The threat is real. It's easy to dismiss it as a "what are the odds" type of event, but the truth is that it happens far too frequently. People can buy these 1+ watt diode lasers very easily online and do with them what they will, and they frequently choose to point them at airplanes. What does it look like in the cockpit? Pretty much like an intense green strobe effect. And the worst thing is that once the light is seen the first time it's human instinct to look out the window to try and find the cause of the flash. Then the second blast hits as the pilot is looking directly at it. Depending on altitude and beam divergence, there's a real possibility of permanent eye damage. The lower to the ground, the more likely the damage. At night a pilot's vision is kept adapted to the ambient light in the cockpit, so their pupils are dilated to allow more light in. This also increases likelihood of damage. Flash blindness can last for many minutes, and it's a very bad thing to have your pilots flash blinded. It is a real issue, and having personally experienced it, I can say it's a problem.
"One Hundred BILLION dollars!"
It just occurred to me that when the movie came out a hundred billion was a lot of dollars.
How quaint.
5mW at an area of 1mm^2 corresponds to 50W at an area of 100cm^2.
This means that looking into a 5mW laser, and assuming it is concentrated in 1mm^2, corresponds to looking at a 50W lightbulb at a distance of 2.82cm.
Ouch.
Just because the light isn't visible doesn't mean it's not harmful. After all, it's the invisible to you ultraviolet light from the Sun that gives you a sunburn.
The primary thing that makes lasers harmful to planes is that the brightness temporarily blinds the pilot. It's like looking directly at the flash from a camera, or an oncoming car's high beams at night. invisible frequencies don't cause temporary blindness (although prolonged exposure can cause permanent damage).
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
The adaptive optics are run by computers. They could be programmed to compensate for any "chromatic" aberration induced by the frequency difference. However, the visibility or invisibility of the laser is not the real issue. The real issue is that the adaptive optics work by calibrating a flexible mirror based on light received from a reference star. The laser creates an artificial reference star by exciting sodium vapour high in the upper atmosphere, causing it to glow. The laser must therefore be tuned to a specific frequency, or the sodium vapour doesn't glow. No glow, no reference star. No reference star, no adaptive optics.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!