Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/08/03/man-mounts-highly-dangerous-la.html
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Weirdly, what he has done is so incredibly stupid and reckless that it may have been legal - at least as far as the federal law prohibiting pointing lasers at aircraft is concerned. The law against laser pointers appears too specific to cover his actions because he didn’t “knowingly” point his laser at a plane, and because his laser may not be a laser “pointer”.
‘§ 39A. Aiming a laser pointer at an aircraft ‘‘(a) OFFENSE.—Whoever knowingly aims the beam of a laser pointer at an aircraft in the special aircraft jurisdiction of the United States, or at the flight path of such an aircraft, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both. ‘‘(b) LASER POINTER DEFINED.—As used in this section, the term ‘laser pointer’ means any device designed or used to amplify electromagnetic radiation by stimulated emission that emits a beam designed to be used by the operator as a pointer or highlighter to indicate, mark, or identify a specific position, place, item, or object.
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Everything about this video frightens me and makes me mourn for the future. We have YouToobers blowing up beer bottles with lasers.
“I’m just going to slide the wood in…”
“DUDE, point it at that planet!”
If you take a drink every time he says “Dude” and “Woah”, you’ll die of alcohol poisoning.
Somewhere, aliens are watching Youtube and saying “Yep, I think we may need to go ahead and visit Earth sometime soon. The primates are selling lasers and gene editing equipment to their younglings.”
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“ However, your pupil is only half this size fully open, so a pilot could theoretically receive a 50mw/cm2 exposure. A decent amount, but you have to remember even the smallest plane is traveling 150 miles per hour which would limit total exposure time to only 3ms( time it takes to cross a 9 inch beam).”
Who says you’re hitting the planes at an angle? If a pilot’s looking At the ground (say for an airfield) you would be hitting them straight in the eye for seconds.
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This is actually Trump’s latest Virus Buster. You just sit on it and voila!
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Where’s the boing boing shop link? I wan’t one of these.
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Man, I hate being that guy, but I’m less concerned about pointing that thing at the sky than what he was doing on his driveway. How does he know no one will walk by ? His aiming device had the beam off his plywood backstop at least once…ya, maybe it hits the car, but reflective surfaces? and those “protective” glasses? sure, his call, but there may be those who think he’s demonstrated these thing are safe for these applications
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I did not read the disclaimer but in the vid they talked about checking the scheduled flights around the area and presumably they are not shooting it close to an airport. It would be pretty unlikely for a pilot to happen to be looking right at that beam and staying in the beam line for any length of time. Though it would have been nice for him to confirm that he was no where near an airport.
Let’s go shoot stuff in the driveway!
What about safety for the neighborhood?
We’ll use the gas tank of my car for a backstop. It’s cool, dude.
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He seems to be not at all interested in saying what wavelength this laser is. But Google leads me to a similar mounted 200W laser diode…
https://www.laserdiodesource.com/shop/915nm-200W-Fiber-Coupled-XI
Seems to be near infrared - 950nm.
It’s highly irresponsible to be showing people how to mount one of these items to a car. You could put a lot of peoples’ eye out with that!
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Anyone who could wire the electronics together isn’t going to be stopped with the car-mounting part.
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I agree - it needs to be more powerful.
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Still seems like he could be in regulatory hot water though.
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Yeah, I was waiting for it to burn through the wood and then either his office window or the car in the driveway.
Also, I’m happy to know now why blasters in the Star Wars universe don’t continue on and burn holes in spaceship hulls. Divergence!
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So… this is just coming from me here, but anyway…
If I were messing around with a laser like that, outside a real laboratory setting, even with safety glasses, I would put a thick patch over my dominant eye for the entire time I have the laser hooked up to power, even when it’s off, even when wearing the safety glasses. Just sayin.
Edit: and I would never actually mess around with any laser like that outside a regulated laboratory. I value my eyes (both of them) and the eyes of everyone within 100m of me. Any reflective surface that I’m not aware of could destroy an eye. Are those safety glasses actually effective against a laser that can burn holes in metal? I realize he made a cool video, got lots of views, and got sponsored by DJI drones, but… this is almost as dumb as those parcour videos that get a million views by doing flips on the edge of a roof.
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Even though I’ve never actually worked as an electrician, I still have a lifelong habit of keeping one hand behind me when I grab something I’m not yet totally sure about.
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ya, I noticed when he was holding the wood in his office he pulled it out of the beam before shutting the beam down…next stop window
As if old Land Rovers didn’t need any assistance to catch fire…
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This is the kind of thing that has bothered me for years. As technology advances, the amount of power for destruction divided by the average person’s common sense/ethics just keeps rising exponentially.
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