Boeing’s latest 10kw laser (HEL-MD) fits in a HEMTT and has a lot of special tuning that makes it plausible as a prototype for missile and mortar defense. The project is working on upgrading it to 50kw, and Lockheed has a 60kw fiber optic laser they’re planning on mounting into the HEL-MD platform. The Lockheed design is really interesting in that it will be a huge leap in energy efficiency.
Eventually, they want to get the lasers into the 100kw range so they can be used offensively against planes, high altitude drones (possibly even satellites and ICBMs) and perhaps even ships and ground vehicles and fortifications.
Still, if you could mount several dozen of them to an air craft carrier, it’d be pretty much impervious to any attack outside of kinetic bombardment from orbit… Or other lasers I guess.
I found a laser which could do that at a swap meet in Melbourne. I think it would have cost me about 120 AUD, cash only because you need a license to own a laser like that. The owner showed me how he could use it to set fire to box made of lightweight pine.
Its a neat toy and I was tempted but I knew it would always be a liability to own something dangerous and moderately illegal. It would only take some nut near me to flash one at a police helicopter and I could be in real trouble.
You know, if I had one of those, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to resist the temptation to try and light a cigarette with it. Then I’d either catch my beard on fire, or end up shining it directly into my eye.
I’m glad I don’t have one. I’d only be able to trust myself not to do something stupid on a whim with it in a supervised laboratory setting, with safety goggles and fume hoods and eyewash stations and such.
The light output from a laser is effectively brighter than a LED or incandescent bulb because it’s coherent. This means that all of the photons being emitted have exactly the same wavelength, and the same phase (ie the peaks and troughs of the individual waves match up), and tend to all go in the same direction.
In a normal light source some of the waves will be interfering and cancelling each other out, and they will be spreading out more, so you get less effective brightness .
All of this is why you can shine a 5W LED in your face all day long, but I really recommend you don’t do the same with a 5W laser.
(That wiki article on coherence isn’t very helpful, I can have another crack at explaining it in layman’s terms if anyone’s interested)
The beam’s visibility confuses me… That garage didn’t seem smoky or dusty to me, but I’ve not played with big lasers hands on, so I’m kinda wondering why that beam is visible at all.
For that price, I would jump on the offer immediately. Licence schmlicence.
What type and wavelength?
Sometimes one has to accept risks. The technical ones can be mitigated easily.
Most such neighbors have 532 nm ones. If you had a different wavelength, you’d be in the clear anyway.
Add a lens. Make the beam convergent-divergent, with a short focal length lens, so the amount of energy per area falls FAST with distance - enough to ignite things near the lens, not enough to cause damage a couple inches away.
Also, people do that. Without the lens.
The goggles are the important part.
The shorter the wavelength, the more the scattering from small particles and even molecules.
A 1-watt laser is quite a high power for a laser lighter. Even then, with beam divergence of 35 degrees (600 mrad), it has a NOHD (nominal ocular hazard distance) of some 6.5 cm. Calculator is here:
With such high beam divergence it would not have long distance between the object to light up and the lighter (less than 1 inch is practical), but it’d be very wind-resistant.
