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The Starfire: U.S. Laser Weapon Research

nytimes.com — The U.S. government is seeking to develop a powerful ground-based laser weapon that would use beams of concentrated light to destroy enemy satellites in orbit. The largely secret project is part of a wide-ranging effort to develop space both defensive and offensive. The White House has recently sought to play down the issue of space arms.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 29, 2006

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  • daldredge, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14One has to ramp up to that level of power. The power required to take out a sat is MUCH less than that required to take out an asteroid.

    Do schools not teach basic physics anymore?
  • chris355, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12You can't take out an asteroid with a laser! You have to land on it with the space shuttle, bore 800 feet into it and drop in a thermonuclear weapon and blow the damn thing in half! Didn't you geeks see Armageddon?
  • falcon734, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11Are you serious?
  • masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9@daldredge:

    Schools don't teach Geography, anymore (not kidding; they really, actually do not teach the subject). You expect them to teach Physics?
  • Hickeroar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7No kidding on that count. :)

    The "largely secret" project is really not largely secret anyway...
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Hell no. I am below average size!
  • Guncrazy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4And why not? The Chinese have been working on (and testing) this for years.

    http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?F=2121111&C=america
  • RodeoRobot, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Lasers are awesome. I wonder if they could use a system like this to push a light sail-based space craft.
  • Hickeroar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I actually read an article once talking about that exactly... I guess it could be possible...
  • Guncrazy, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6From the article, "The largely secret project..."

    Why does it not surprise me that the reporting paper is the New York Times? This has got to be the paper most popular with America's enemies, ever.
  • SundayTrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Yea, back in the 80's a test went wrong with the guidance system and the laser targeted a house causing a huge container of popcorn kernels to pop and flood the house.
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2THIS NEWS IS SO OLD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • robertgoodwin, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Why is this being posted now? The article is from May!

    Oh, wait... there's an election around the corner, isn't there?
  • Hickeroar, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2That's china's rig, not ours...
  • flippinjeremy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2it was tragic...
  • dfltr, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2uh oh... it's an oomkin.

    wtb respec, pst.
  • BlackCow, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2@masamunecyrus
    There is a physics class in my high school and they also taught basic physics in 8th grade.
  • MordechaiCohen, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Sharks with lasers on their heads ...

  • guardsman85, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm not pretending to be an expert, nor do I have an solid opinion on the accurateness of the article. However, I kind of have to at least wonder. The Starfire Observatory itself is no secret. Oh, and I find it interesting that there is no source credit for the photograph on the NYT website. Could that be because the photo was taken from the Air Force's website?
    http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/SOR/SORfacilities.htm
    The whole story seems suspiciously circumstantial to me. Perhaps another attempt by the Times to cast the Bush administration in a negative light?
  • andrewwl, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I don't think it blasts the thing out of the sky, just breaks it while its up there.
  • DonPMitchell, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1The Russians did this more than 20 years ago. There was a old rumor at Caltech/JPL that the Russians disabled Seasat with lasers, because seasat data was being processed to extract Soviet submarine wakes. Who knows if that's true, but the Russians pretty much invented all this funky phase-conjugate optics and exotic laser technology. Typical example: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2003SPIE.5137..165S
  • neonic, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Why was he modded down, even once? That video was very cool.
  • Burritovision, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I oppose armed conflict.
  • pr0t0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Useless?

    I think you are forgetting about the Crossbow Project!
    The Crossbow Project. There's no defense like a good offense.

    I heard Chris Knight had something to do with it.
  • inkyblue2, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2separated at birth?
    http://www.shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_shamus/deathstarfiring.gif
    http://eyeball-series.org/sor-3beam.jpg
  • Wynner, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Starfire is fine, but that slow casting time can be a real bummer. Gogo MOONFIRE!
  • AJH16, on 10/12/2007, -4/+5Not terribly news worthy since there has been lots of research going on in the weaponized lazer field, but still interesting to read.
  • Jinglebones, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I just joined Digg so that I could point out that we saw the "Chinese are blinding our sats with lasers" story yesterday.

    Both of these stories smell fishy.
  • fricken4, on 10/12/2007, -3/+4Space weapons are pretty useless when Americas enemies are pretty much all geurilla/terrorist fighters. The Star Wars program is just an excuse to funnel untold trillion into the military industrial complex.
  • guardsman85, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I'm not arguing the possibility of the concept. I'm just arguing that the Times has a way of twisting stories and inflating facts to create "news."
  • telegraham, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1http://www.de.afrl.af.mil/Gallery/Video/DE-Video.mpg
  • flippinjeremy, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Old News; I've been testing this for years...

    http://www2.westfalia.de/medien/scaled_pix/300/300/000/000/000/000/000/379/00.jpg
  • Lane, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2i would love to see the face of some kid as he flies his kite into the lasers range and watches it be cut in half and burn all the way down while simply thinking WTF?!
  • MrKite, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Wouldn't it be great if all weapons were banned from the world, and we were back to when you had to deal with people hand-to-hand?
  • philz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0The article mixes scientific and military stuff - while most of the time this is correct.

    We're using laser all the time to track objects in space, the difference is the power (and wether we use chemical lasers or not) - we may want to measure the distance, we don't want to blind the guys/girls (oh, she's back already) on board the ISS.

    Still, there are things that military and the scientific usage have in common, both aim at objects in space. So showing a picture of a site doing that isn't that wrong.
  • flippinjeremy, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0was that some sort of World of Warcraft reference?
  • v3xt0r, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Nuke China! =p
  • polyGone, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1I think we kinda had to see this comming...
  • Cymrubeats, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0we'll call it starfire, who will know?
    i want a station of my own
    i have the tools
    i have my rules

    i'll load the back and you can drive
    broken bodies all the time
    let's take a ride
    starfire tonight
    ten thousand miles away
    away

    la la la la la la la la...
  • iOsiris, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0The US copying the Chinese military? ironic? :)
  • philz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0You got to shot what you can, right? :-)
  • jlebrech, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0dupe sorry
  • Methodius, on 10/12/2007, -5/+0"Stone age? Dude, we have effing laser beams."
  • jlebrech, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1Well its an answer to this article http://www.kungfooo.com/2006/09/28/10-things-that-should-have-been-invented-by-now/
  • masamunecyrus, on 10/12/2007, -10/+4Surely we'd calculate the trajectory paths that the satellites would take when they plummet from orbit years after being shot to death by a laser.
    ...Nahhh, we're the U.S. Afterall, if it won't cause a problem for another decade, who cares? -_-;
  • daeyeth, on 10/12/2007, -12/+2sigh. Stupid America. Figures we'd think about shooting down "the enemy" first rather than astroids that could kill us all.
  • wurzelgummage, on 10/12/2007, -14/+3Should come in handy the next time they want to threaten a country with being "sent back to the stone age".

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