Is a Laser Data Link 1.5 Million Kilometers Feasible?

An anonymous reader writes "On the Canary Islands last week, a team from Oerlikon Space demonstrated the feasibility of a laser link across a distance of 1.5 million kilometers for the first time ever. In the future, laser links like this one will be able to transmit data across huge distances through the universe far more rapidly and efficiently than is possible using conventional radio links today."

One important warning

[Anonymous Coward]

Do not look into laser with remaining eye.

I figured it out!

[SailorSpork]

Canary Islands and experiments with laser beams? Ahah! There must be sharks there!

Re:Never saw this coming

[erroneus]

I'm not sure the space-technology people will be using "aim." If anything, I'd suspect they'd lean to something OSS like "Pidgin."

Canary Islands?

[j-stroy]

Are there sharks there or something?

"far more rapidly"

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Because lasers travel at least 42 times as fast as radio waves!

unfortunately

[LM741N]

They will all stop at the last mile, rendering the project useless.

Re:Never saw this coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but what's the data rate?

About 299,792,458 m / s.

Re:"far more rapidly"

[huckamania]

I'm guessing that the laser packs the 1s and 0s better then the radio waves. Or maybe they leave out the 0s.

Re:Targeting that is going to be a bitch.

[meringuoid]

now try to do the math on all of the floating bodies and the effect of the gravity from neighboring quasars and other space phenomena.

If an object 1.5 million kilometres away has a neighbouring quasar, you have bigger worries than communication.

Re:Never saw this coming

[ricosalomar]

...proven with radio, that would seem good enough for me.

I agree. We should stop all development and research in this area immediately.

Is there anything else that people are working on that you don't see a need to improve? They should have checked with you first, I guess.

Coming soon...

[SlipperHat]

The ability to encrypt nefarious messages in a death-ray across long distances.

Some popular messages include:

- "If you are reading this message, you are probably toast"
- "PWNED!!!"
- "(Scorpio) Avoid reading under strong light"
- "Knock, knock"
- "Is this the James Bond? Oh sorry, my mistake."
- "Can you hear me now?"
- "Special Delivery!"
- "Ceiling Cat sez hi!"

Re:Not exclusive concepts

[Radon360]

so do "rasers" exist

Well, Motorola developed something that sounded like this, but from what I understand, they often have to be packaged in an enclosure that's some gaudy shade of pink, occasionally emit short, audible clips of annoying boy-band songs, and they're only useful for conveying gossip between young teenage girls.

(sorry, couldn't resist.)

Re:Never saw this coming

[Ron Harwood]

Either way, your ping times are gonna suck. ;)

If we start shining huge lasers into space

[caluml]

If we start shining huge lasers into space, we're going to end up accidentally blinding aliens. Which might be good (if they're chest-explody types), or bad (if they're hot sex-starved space-babes). Your call.

Re:A bit exaggerated?

[j00r0m4nc3r]

I dunno, I think if they modulated the laser to the harmonic frequency of dilithium they could route the message through a subspace channel on a tachyon carrier wave. This is pretty elementary stuff.

Re:A bit exaggerated?

[Anonymous Coward]

Exactly! Like putting too much air in a balloon!

Re:Never saw this coming

[Kinthelt]

It's okay. Even NASA confuses SI with Imperial measurements.

Re:Never saw this coming

[ArsonSmith]

Not to mention the round trip time it's going to take for data to get back and forth over this link.

Re:Never saw this coming

[Gospodin]

They'll just have to up the power on those lasers. A lot.

It's overkill

[MartinJW]

What we really need is a laser that travels a few feet, and makes a swishing noise when you wave it around.