[geeks] Starshine 3

[James Sharp]

> On Fri, Dec 07, 2001 at 12:39:45PM -0500, s at avoidant.org wrote:
> > > What would be the chances of "catching" the bird
> > > with a laser and some amateur coordinates. It orbits at about 472km.
> > Mighty fscking slim without tracking equipment. Wouldn't be hard to
> > build the tracking system if we had the wherewithal. It's sort of
> > actually what I went to school for (mech eng + applied physics =
> > aerospace design). If you've got spare $$$ floating around, we could do
> > it.
>
> Sigh.  What was the recently posted list policy about discussing terrorism?  I
> seem to remeber hearing something after the (j/k) bombing /. thread.

Who said anything about terrorism?  he just wants to bounce the laser off
the satellite, since it is nothing but a big orbiting mirror...and I doubt
5mw is going to vaporize anyone.

At 472km, your beam (with an average beam diverenge of 5mrad) will only be
2.4km in diameter...you'll have to get realllllllly lucky to hit the bird.