Editing Talk:1681: Laser Products

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:The first part of that question was tested in 2012. http://www.universetoday.com/93987/amateur-astronomers-flash-the-space-station/. The article mentions that the 800 million lumen (dubious) searchlights came in brighter than magnitude 0 but the 1 MW blue laser was "also visible". From the picture it looks to be about magnitude 2 or 3. To match the sun's brightness (for blinding purposes) you'd need to get that up to about -26.5. Making up a 29 magnitude difference means you'd need to make your laser about 400 billion times brighter, or about 400 petawatts. You can probably bring that power draw down significantly by focusing the beam more, but since the Earth's power consumption is only about 2.5 petawatts (per Randall), you're already pretty far outside the realm of possibility. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.220|108.162.237.220]] 13:41, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
 
:The first part of that question was tested in 2012. http://www.universetoday.com/93987/amateur-astronomers-flash-the-space-station/. The article mentions that the 800 million lumen (dubious) searchlights came in brighter than magnitude 0 but the 1 MW blue laser was "also visible". From the picture it looks to be about magnitude 2 or 3. To match the sun's brightness (for blinding purposes) you'd need to get that up to about -26.5. Making up a 29 magnitude difference means you'd need to make your laser about 400 billion times brighter, or about 400 petawatts. You can probably bring that power draw down significantly by focusing the beam more, but since the Earth's power consumption is only about 2.5 petawatts (per Randall), you're already pretty far outside the realm of possibility. [[Special:Contributions/108.162.237.220|108.162.237.220]] 13:41, 18 May 2016 (UTC)
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::When I say blind, I mean "blind" in the same sense of "I accidentally flashed my green laser pointer in my eye via my mirror." So that would be just 35mW at 20ft. Couldn't you develop an ultra-focused laser (atmospheric distortion aside) that was able to focus all that energy onto an astronaut's eye from the ground? [[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 05:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)  
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When I say blind, I mean "blind" in the same sense of "I accidentally flashed my green laser pointer in my eye via my mirror." So that would be just 35mW at 20ft. Couldn't you develop an ultra-focused laser (atmospheric distortion aside) that was able to focus all that energy onto an astronaut's eye from the ground?
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[[User:International Space Station|International Space Station]] ([[User talk:International Space Station|talk]]) 05:53, 19 May 2016 (UTC)  
  
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::: {{w|Laser guide star}}s are impressively bright at a quarter of the distance to your orbit.  5 kW {{w|laser broom}}s have been proposed for laser satellite removal.  The main problem with laser astronaut surgery is probably your huge relative velocity; they won't be visible through your windows long enough to be targeted.  You might be more successful powering a {{w|space weapon|laser cannon}} from your solar array and trying to strike Baikonur.  [[User:.42|.42]] ([[User talk:.42|talk]]) 06:43, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
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: {{w|Laser guide star}}s are impressively bright at a quarter of the distance to your orbit.  5 kW {{w|laser broom}}s have been proposed for laser satellite removal.  The main problem with laser astronaut surgery is probably your huge relative velocity; they won't be visible through your windows long enough to be targeted.  You might be more successful powering a {{w|space weapon|laser cannon}} from your solar array and trying to strike Baikonur.  [[User:.42|.42]] ([[User talk:.42|talk]]) 06:43, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
  
 
An inkjet printer is very definitely ''not'' xerographic printing, which refers to a dry printing process. A better term would be "raster" rather than "xerographic" although the former still does not imply converting the image to pixels, which appears to be the point the sentence is trying to make. At least "raster" means the image is converted to scan lines...[[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.123|108.162.241.123]] 02:31, 19 May 2016 (UTC)
 
An inkjet printer is very definitely ''not'' xerographic printing, which refers to a dry printing process. A better term would be "raster" rather than "xerographic" although the former still does not imply converting the image to pixels, which appears to be the point the sentence is trying to make. At least "raster" means the image is converted to scan lines...[[Special:Contributions/108.162.241.123|108.162.241.123]] 02:31, 19 May 2016 (UTC)

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