h a l f b a k e r yOn the one hand, true. On the other hand, bollocks.
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Space Flak
Mercury droplets to re-direct Laser beams | |
If GalactiPol is on your tail & you hear the dreaded sound that indicates you've been target locked, Just fire the Space Flak cannon which will emit a shield of mercury droplets to re-direct lasers being fired at you.
With any luck the laser will reflect back into your pursuit.
Actually, I don't
know why all those star pilots don't think of putting a mirrored surface on their ships if they're going to get shot at with lasers.
Retroreflectors
http://physics.ucsd...hy/apollo/lrrr.html
As left on Earth's Moon [csea, Aug 25 2005]
Moon Litter
http://www.mswmanag...mw_0407_beyond.html
space junk is out there! [csea, Aug 26 2005]
[link]
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Cunning. But no use against my asteroid gun, I'm afraid. |
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Reflective droplets will tend to diffuse the incident laser light. What you need is an array of retroreflectors, sometimes called "corner cubes." See [link.] |
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//if they're going to get shot at with lasers.// Because those lasers don't travel anywhere near the speed of light. So who knows what they are really made of. |
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Whatever you fire back at them would
have to be reflective at the frequency of
light they're shooting you with. Mercury
would work for the visible spectrum but
I have no idea how it works beyond
either end. That's not a 'no' -- that's an
'I don't know'. |
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On a related topic, did anybody notice
that in Babylon5 (nerd moment) part of
the 'defence grid' involved shooting
projectiles back along the path of laser
beams -- effecitively giving the station
very thick local hull plating. |
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Wouldn't the mercury freeze? |
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//who knows what they are really made of.//
If they really were lasers, would they be not visible in space as well? (unless it was pointed at your eyes). |
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[DenholmRicshaw], I thought about the mercury freezing after I posted & was hoping that it is still reflective in a frozen state. |
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//Wouldn't the mercury freeze?// |
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No, it would 'boil'. Still, that would leave you with an large cloud of mercury atoms that would be pretty nasty to run in to at high sub-light speeds. |
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[CF], I believe, you're right. I don't know if this would even work then. I can't find anything specifically dealing with what happens to light passing through mercury vapor.
I wonder if it converts to electricity? |
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[csea], those retroreflectors would work great affixed to the back of a starship. I was looking at the link and wondering .... Did the astronauts just tear the cover off and throw it down on the ground a few feet away? Lunar Littering?
That's insane. I'm thinking about trying to contact Edgar Mitchell (the only surviving member of Apollo 14) and ask him about that photo. |
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[Zimmy], there's a lot of space junk out there! And it's being added to regularly. See [link]. |
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I remember reading somewhere that shuttle launches have to take into account the orbits of many hundreds (thousands?) of earth-orbiting pieces of junk. |
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