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Educational value in science fiction
The laser LED of a blu-ray disk writer operates in the blue region of
the specturm and puts out about 1/8th watt. Thatt's enough to light a match at a distane, or burn a whole through black plastic trash bag material. (I've seen it done) at a distance. They put out 1/8th watt and consume about 1/2 watt. A sheet of 50 x 50 LEDs (availble in reels from the manufacturer) may be assembled on a square foot of PC board - that's 2,500 units - populating both sides of the board - a total of 5,000 units. Two boards each a square foot contains 10,000 units - producing a total of 1,250 watts of laser energy - powered by 6,250 watt DC power supply.. Mount an optical fiber on each of the 10,000 LED lasers apeture - which is 0.4 mm in diameter - and cut their length so that they are all the same. Then arc them so they all come to the same plane - forming an optical fiber bundle 40 mm in diameter - a little les than 2 inches. A set of 2 inch optical elments in an optics rack produce a well collimated beam. The beam line is fed through a roof mounted LIDAR beam steering system - and operates in parallel with a high definition LIDAR system. The LIOAR system does not use this laser beam. It uses its own laser elements - but operates through the same optics. In this way LIDAR picks up an image and displays it on a compuer screen. The operator identifies a target, and when the LIDAR 'refreshes' over the target area, the 1,250 watt blue beam comes on - burning the target where indicated. This continues until the target is no longer registered, or until the operator shuts the system down. This would be an interesting means to deny access to a well defined region. The system would cost arond $400,000 to build. And be capable of targeting any number of threats simultaneously. A more traditional ray gun would take the two one foot square PC boards and implement them as a 3 inch diameter four foot long tube, whose inner lining was populated with 10,000 LED lasers - each equipped with an optical fiber, that ran down the interior of the tube to an optical system at one end. A microturbine weighing only a few ounces - MEMs based - powered by butane provides the needed 6.3 kW electrical output - and a single 8 oz can provides 4 hours firing time. The narrow angle blue laser beam operates in conjunction with LIDAR again, but here the field of view is restricted to about 40 degrees - with targets designated on a small LCD screen - you show the gun your target(s) designate them on the screen, and the gun does the rest. The more compact unit, with the mems based butane powered microturbine would cost around $1.2 million to build first time -and $800,000 per copy. Rebuilds for $200,000 after 3,000 hours of firing time - normal service. |
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Educational value in science fiction
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