Big Freakin' Laser Beams In Space

schnippy writes "Esquire is running an interesting article on the work on adaptive optics and directed energy being done at the U.S. Air Force's Starfire Optical Observatory. This facility was the subject of a New York Times article earlier this year which suspected the facility was conducting anti-satellite weapons research under the cover of astronomy."

Spoiler Warning - Bruce Sterling Novel

[count0]

So, is Bruce Sterling's Zenith Angle [sfreviews.net] mentioned? Since among the many things it covers is exactly the idea of anti-satellite weaponization of adaptive optical tech.

cz

Re:Any word...

[dr_dank]

The solution is to create a passenger compartment inside a cargo container filled with water, which is a terrific absorber of energy, which in turn can house the sharks.

Water goes in cargo container, cargo container goes in rocket, shark goes in water. Our shark.

Re:Focusing Like a Laser on the Economy

[CodeMasterPhilzar]

"...boondoggle..." ???

Not hardly, it works, and works a heck of a lot better than you might think from reading "mainstream media" accounts. Also note, it is less expensive than you might think. If you sum up all the $ spent on missile defense since the mid 1980s, it is just slightly over the amount the attacks on 9/11 cost this country's economy. In my book, that's cheap insurance against events that would be significantly more costly to the country than 4 airliners.

Also, Missile Defense is not the same as Reagan's "Star Wars." The real Missile Defense system is far more practical and pragmatic than the grand vision. Someday, yes, there will be a version of that vision. But the current Missile Defense system is firmly rooted in real-world technologies.

People are surprised by this?

[photontaker]

If you go look at the web page for the starfire optical range it clearly mentions the "Directed Energy Directorate's Starfire Optical Range". A large number of good observatories are at least partially funded by the Air Force... MRO in New Mexico is a perfect example. Regardless a lot of the information saying these things dates back to 1998 and 2001. The Air Force also has some neat tricks up it sleeve doing optical interferometry (which is especially tricky since you really need to know the position of your mirrors to within the wavelength that you're working with). Last I heard though, that was limited by the fact that someone dropping a garbage can in the next room could throw things out of alignment. There's one thing that people are overlooking too, it's great to be able to observe things with adaptive optics systems. I have another friend in astronomy who has actually been able to resolve stars using an Air Force system. The trick though is that stars aren't putting out enough energy to disrupt the atmosphere. If you suddenly start pumping enough energy through the atmosphere to destroy a satellite, you're going to do a lot of local heating and there's no way you could modify your beam fast enough to keep it nice and tight. You might as well use a non-adaptive telescope.

Re:It's a USAF project, no s**t it's military!!!

[DerekLyons]

From what I understood of the limited amount we were told

Of course, the trick was not producing the image per-se, but producing it fast enough to be useful as part of a firing solution, i,.e a crystal clear shot of the target that takes 5 minutes to produce is of limited utility

I suspect you misunderstood entirely - as a crystal clear picture is pretty useless in generating a firing solution, whether produced in 5 nanoseconds or 5 minutes. To generate a firing solution, you need (at a minimum) relative position and hopefully range. Once you have several sucessive sets, you can derive the reminder of the firing terms merely from the change in relative position. [1]
 
Pictures don't help do this except in bad SF movies where they put crosshairs on a screen. Pictures *do* help with positive target ID (I.E. screening out decoys.)

[1] You can derive range and velocity from sucessive relative positions by plugging in 'guesses' as to each and seeing if they produce an identical set of relative positions. Of course the more terms you have to start with (derived directly from observation), the more you can constrain the spread of any remaining terms that must be 'guessed' and the faster you can obtain a solution.

Disclaimer: Yes, I have worked fire control IRL, just not on this kind of system. I have studied systems much akin to it as a non-professional.

My Starfire Story

[rickwood]

I visited the Starfire facility in the mid-'90s. Now, it seems to me that if they'd let me, a long-haired hippie-lookin' mofo who's only reason for being there was I was schtooping the Colonel's daughter and had mentioned in small talk with him that I was interested in lasers and built that nitrogen job out of Scientific American in high school, it can't be that classified. It's not like they said anything about keep your mouth shut or made me sign anything. We did pass through a gate guarded by some serious lookin' dudes who pointed their rifles at me, but they didn't even take my name that I recall.

After we got to the top of the mountain, we went into the main building. There were a couple of dudes in suits there. I was introduced, but I don't remember who they were. Not sure if they were Congressional types or Pentagon guys or what, but the people who worked there were nice to them so I tried to be on my best behavior. We got a short lecture about the project and some of the photos they had produced were handed around.

In case you didn't RTFA, the purpose of Starfire is to use a projected laser dot to configure an adaptive-optics mirror to compensate for atmospheric distortion and allow for better terrestrial astronomy. It works pretty damn good too. The photos I saw were very impressive. Better than Hubble in some cases, which they were justifiably very proud of. They sure were a helluva lot cheaper to get than Hubble photos.

After the lecture we got a tour of the facility. There were several telescopes on the mountain, a couple of which were capable of projecting a laser. The main 'scope had a really neat setup where they could have several experiments going at once and rotate a mirror to pick which one went up the tube. Other than that there were the optical experiment tables, the adaptive-optics setup, the imaging system, and several different kinds of lasers of varying impressive powers.

Next we went into the main dome. We were informed that the main telescope could depress below 0 degrees and the dome could be lowered in 30 seconds, and raised in two minutes by machine, or ten minutes if the hand cranks had to be employed. At the end of the telescope I spotted a disc with "Raytheon" on it. I casually asked, "What's the radar for?"
"To make sure there are no aircraft entering the beam path," the tour guide replied. The suit dudes were very surprised by my question so I mostly shut up for the rest of the tour. We then exited the platform so they could open the dome and slew the telescope.

Next came the control room. There were a bunch of guys in there, some in uniform and some in civvies. The were all business and didn't say much. They showed us the computer that had the ephemeris of every object in orbit down to the size of a quarter. All the computers were UNIX and X Windows, FYI. As a software guy, I thought the interface left something to be desired, but that's just me. Tracking an object with the 'scope was as simple as clicking on the desired target. We watched the 'scope slew through a CCTV monitor located near the target computer. Sadly, conditions were unfavorable for a test firing, so I didn't get to see the big mother fire.

Last they took us down to the "shack" where the guide-star laser was produced and sent through a smaller scope. The guys in here were friendlier, hippie/scientist types. I rapped with them a little while the brass talked amongst themselves. They were really excited about their laser because it was very powerful and very yellow, which worked out good for their astronomy.

Understand, the men who worked on this project never, ever said anything about it's use as a weapon. They always talked about it in terms of the astronomy. They had a nice telescope with a honkin' big laser under it, a radar on the front of it, and a computer that could track the 'scope on every object in orbit, up on a mountain in the middle of nowhere, but officially the fact that Starfire could be used as a weapon never occurred to them