
Pilot's eye damaged by 'military' laser shone into cockpit at Heathrow - jahnu
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/23/ba-pilots-eye-damaged-by-military-laser-shone-into-cockpit-at-heathrow
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buserror
I'm not sure the people doing that do it 'for fun' \-- I think might be a bit
of a reaction to what the aviation lobby does around Heathrow: the planes are
being kept a low altitude for dozens of miles while making their turns.

I live between Slough and Maidenhead, _WAY_ off heathrow, and you have most
planes flying at very low altitude over, especially after take off, because
they (presumably) try to save fuel during the takeoff phase and turn for their
primary heading.

Problem is, they piss off _millions_ of people over massively populated area
by doing that, and are inherently also kept within range of these laser
pointers for a lot longer, so they increase the probability of someone stupid
wanting to 'do something about it'...

I don't have a solution mind you, apart perhaps installing some filtering for
most common laser light on cockpit windows (if it's even possible to stack
filters while still seeing thru)?

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jahnu
Can anyone here make a rough estimate of how powerful a laser would be
required to do that?

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buserror
I don't know, but that certainly requires quite a beam to still be dangerous
over a few hundred meters, especially with the pollution around to scatter the
light... I'd wouldn't think it would be the handheld kind, but I don't know..

What I know is that the military don't have exclusivity on big lazors -- my
hackspace has a couple sourced from the medical industry that are scary. They
are also the size of a washing machine, so not the 'pointy' kind.

