Quote:
Originally Posted by bojan
Well, 600W is still "only" 600W average, this is not enough to cut the aluminium sheet wing off, certainly not with speed of >200km/h (unless you have good tracking)
But it could sure damage something, if it hits some vital parts, like hydraulics pipes or persplex window... not to mention people or their eyes.
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Interesting, the laser could slice through 3mm steel (admittedly through a lens and with oxygen to get it all going) but it would not cut through alfoil! Steel is something like 60% reflective and gets enough heat in to get started whilst ali is more like 99% preventing the stuff from getting going. Apparently a couple more kW and it would melt and the reflectivity dropped significantly...then you could cut it.
We were working with this laser in the days of "Star Wars" development and we saw this shot of a laser being fired at a mock up spy satellite sitting a few metres away. After several seconds the thing "exploded", but they failed to point out that the thing had several hundred kg of weight sitting on top of it, was held down with "bungi ropes", the beam was focused and was right next to it...minor point I guess in their case. In our case if the beam was not focused, it barely scorched paper. Getting it to travel through several km of air and being able to do anything to a moving target was thought to be a huge joke.
The whole star wars thing is best sumarised by a quote from a documentary I saw back then, I can't remember the exact figures, but the story goes something like this.
Politician who gives the nod for more money sees demonstration and is impressed.
Scientist showing demo says "and that is with just 10 to the power of 10 watts per square mm, to get a real satellite in orbit we need 10 to the power of 20 watts."
Politician "So we are half way there already!"
Scientist, rubbing hands
Wish I could be that dumb and get paid that much money to give the ok to someone so much smarter.