Banned: Pointing Lasers at Sky

Originally posted by JohnnyAnonymous
A little over a year ago while I was participating on a two day project with Ruben Uriarte (the California Director of MUFON) we talked in length while staring up at the sky in search of 'fastwalkers'. The subject of bright lights came up after I had mentioned that on a different outing, one member wanted to flash his Hi-Intensity flashlight at the first sign of a possible UFO. I continued by saying that I had strongly urged him not to do so and to remain as close as to being a neutral observer as possible. Ruben then proceeded to tell me that my advice was very sound and then the subject gravitated to lasers, and again he said that it is not advisable to shine any bright object especially a laser at a craft or entity. He had reports and first-hand witness accounts to back that advice with.

I think there was that famous UFO abduction case, where 4 people who were camping were abducted. They state that promptly after they shined their flashlight towards the UFO, it accended on them. I think they (aliens) would interpret a light as some type of engagement.

Originally posted by one_small_step
Freezer, what is the range on that baby? Would it get something in geosync / leo??

I'm not sure actually. Theres a mountain about 2 miles from my house. Ive looked through my telescope while shining the pen laser at the mountain, and the dot looks like a 20 foot wide area of green light. I have one of the weaker ones, and even that was $200. They sell 350mw, and laserglow sells a monster handheld @ 450mw which can set things on fire pretty quick. Imagine someone starts some static with you....pull that baby out and set him on fire lol -- only kidding

Can't point lasers at the sky? I thought you coudln't point lasers period. I remember when I was a kid, I was running around in the subways station fooling around with a laser pointer and the cops came and confiscated it.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam

Originally posted by bothered
CO2 laser, that can get dicey. Using 10kw, how'd they prevent the air from ionizing at the edge and creating a back-fire corona? Or did they use a dampening-coil to smooth the power flow?

Hell, we had it mounted on a boat at one time. There was a big push for chemical-free control of hydrilla and water hyacinths, and the gubmint was willing to spend all of your money that made sense. So one of the guys I worked with at the Corps (I was a youngster then...16!) got this big-ass gas dynamic CO2 laser used from Sandia for somewhere around a hundred thousand bucks and put it on a barge with a big diesel to power it.

We cruised all over torching vegetation in the name of environmentalism. It was a lot of fun with this laser on a big swivel mount, and all of us in goggles like some sci-fi movie. At least it was until someone found out if you shoot ripples, it will spray back all over the boat. You never saw so many guys bailing off into the water screaming.

It didn't work really well at controlling weeds. It would burn them right down, don't get me wrong, but the roots remained under the water. You could fire down into the water and boil them to death but it wasn't very efficient.

Later on they had it on a flatbed trailer doing something or other. That's when they were tuning it by pointing it straight up.

I did find out that CO2 lasers are really good for blowing out glass at half a mile. For some reason, especially if it's cold, you can blow out window glass just like magic. I sort of wonder if that was what happened to all the plane windshields in Denver.

[edit on 21-2-2007 by Tom Bedlam]

Yeah, them lasers can be a lot of fun. Troubling that there was no reflective quantities from the water blasts. Sure sounds like fun though.

You know, concerning the 15+ planes in Denver, I placed that at what with so many workers not coming in from the driven snow; the terrorists might have chunked rocks to test airport security and check patterns of workers. Hell, who knows though, might have been some wank with his trusty pocketed laser.

We found out about reflections by shooting at something in the water once, that's also how we first discovered the amazing glass breaking powers of CO2.

The operational trick was to catch them against the shore with the beam decollimated a bit, and just burn them right down. Unfortunately, they grow back in about three days so you didn't really gain anything.

If you got over them with the barge and fired straight down into the water, you could see water boiling along the beam for about 3 feet. You could boil them to death but the original idea had been that we'd go putt-putting down the canals smoking them on the fly. That was a good idea, it even worked, they just didn't die from it.

Originally posted by Tom Bedlam
....but the original idea had been that we'd go putt-putting down the canals smoking them on the fly.

What an absolutely perfect job description!!

Shucks, everyone has fun but me.....