Detroit trip

[tevarin]

I woke up at 3 am Friday to fly to Detroit to meet the Trumpf laser guys and run some tests. It turns out that in 2008, an 8 kilowatt* diode-pumped infrared laser is about the size of a compact car, with a 25-foot garden hose coming out of one end. The "garden hose" is a shielded fiber optic cable that carries the actual light beam coming out,

Comments

[anonymous]

(Yay for $1.40 Taco Bell bean burritos, the cheapest dinner I've ever bought in an airport)

That's because the price is based on the amount of time you'll remain in possession of them. Something similar is known with beer.

an 8 kilowatt* diode-pumped infrared laser

Combine it with freely orientable mirrors in space and some targeting data, and you could hold the world ransom on the basis that you control all the televisions. The best part is, it's not a big enough threat that they'd call James Bond in on you. Maybe Maxwell Smart.

--josh

[tevarin]

"Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are now in control of the transmission. We control the horizontal and the vertical. We can deluge you with a thousands channels, or expand one single image to crystal clarity and beyond. We can shape your vision to anything our imagination can conceive. For the next hour, we will control all that you see and hear."

Hmm. Hypothesizing a 1 milliwatt IR LED on a remote can affect a TV within a target area of 9 square meters. Then an 8 kilowatt light should be able to affect TVs across 9,000,000 square meters, a square 3km across.

If we flick the mirrors between, say, the 100 largest cities in the world, my guess would be that we'd be able to send a command to each of them every couple of seconds, easily enough to disrupt viewing.

Hold Fox News for ransom for a billion dollars?

[tevarin]

Whoops. Shoud be 8 x 9 x 1000,000 square meters. 8 x 9 kilometer area.

[anonymous]

Remember to factor in speed of light delay, which you'd want to account for so as to conceal your secret underwater / volcano / airship / skyscraper hideout.

--josh

[subjectivity]

glad to hear the trip went well :) are you going back there to do more tests before the competition?

[tevarin]

Probably not me personally; we'll send some other team members back to test the full photovoltaic array when it's ready. Theoretically we're allotted four test dates, but we can potentially do it in 2 or 3, and save on plane fare.