[Laser] moon repeater

[laser@mailman.qth.net]

This seems to be my night for wild ideas.  

I have heard a lot of news media chatter about the President announcing a 
bold new venture for NASA on the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers flight, 
next week.  What got my interest was returning to the Moon with a permanently 
manned base.  

If such a base was built and maintained, the chance for a system like ARISS 
could be added.  Then the system would be accessable whenever the moon is above 
the horizon instead of a few minutes at a time.  And gee, why not use a 
laser?  Ok, how big?  How to arrange the effort?

To simplify the idea, I limited the concept to a repeater.  There are passive 
and active repeaters.  The retro-reflectors left on the Moon by the Apollo 
program are passive repeaters, but are too small and too narrow.  A passive 
repeater would have to be large and allow a beam to expand to a large area on the 
return to Earth.  How large would depend on the power in the transmitted beam. 
 The expansion should be most of the earth to support EME.  For an active 
repeater, the receiver and transmitter will need similar field of view.  The 
earth stations can use a much narrower transmit FOV.


The Moon looks about the same size as a quarter ten feet away (a half of a 
degree).  From the Moon, the earth looks four times bigger (two degrees).  If a 
laser is on the Moon, it will be easier to detect when it is in shadow and the 
earthbound field of view does not include any of the Moon that is Sunlit.  , 
So receiver field of view should be less than

Lots of amateur astronomers view the Moon on a variety of telescopes.  A 
lasercomm system put up there should not interfere with their hobby, but should 
not require an exotic optical system at either end.

Would a laser pointer on the Moon apear brighter than a sunlight reflection 
from shinny object (say a flat sheet of aluminumized mylar 10 feet by 10 feet) 
to an observer on the Earth?  If not, then I am guessing that it would not 
interfere with most amateur Moon watchers any more than the Moon Base itself 
would.

The ideas are disjointed and incomplete.....are they interesting?


James
N5gui


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