[Laser] Laser retroreflectors on Sats

[Rev. Robert P. Chrysafis]

I am straying a little ot here for a moment, but you guys are mentioning 
bouncing lasers off of objects in space.

what is the legalities to bouncing lasers off of satellites. i know here in 
the usa if you shine a small laser in the sky and a plane see's it you will 
wind up getting a rectal from homeland security.

it happened to a guy in plainfeild nj (maybe 2 years ago) not too long ago.

he was playing with one of those laser pens (kind you get from wal mart) in 
his backyard with his kid. shining it in the sky and such. by morning he had 
several 3 letter agencies parked on his front lawn asking him all sorts of 
question. it made the regional paper as well.
apparently he lit up the cockpit of a passing passenger plane.

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Tim Toast" <toasty256 at yahoo.com>
To: <laser at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Friday, August 28, 2009 12:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Laser] Laser retroreflectors on Sats


> I'm intrigued by these iridium sats and their bright reflections of 
> sunlight. I know there are places online where you can get very accurate 
> predictions of the sun glints. Are there any programs that give 
> predictions for reflecting light from two ground based locations instead 
> of just the sunlight ones??
>
> Someone off the list asked me the other day (almost at the same time the 
> topic was brought up) if we had tried bouncing beams off LEO sats and also 
> the iridiums. Some quick math was done and looked almost favorable - i 
> know there's always a catch though. The holy grail seems to me to be the 
> geo-sats which don't move much and are nice and shiny sometimes, "midway" 
> between the moon and leo.
>
>
>
>
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