Paint the moon?

[Brian Densmore]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jonathan Hutchins [mailto:hutchins at opus1.com]
> 
> This sounds like fun.  The article points out that it may not 
> be practical
> as conceived, but if we could get word out to some people with bigger,
> better lasers it might happen after all!
> 
>
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/generalscience/laser_moon_010810-1.htm
l

It doesn't require bigger, better lasers. It could be done with laser
pointers. The problem isn't power, but beam diffusion. Most laser diodes
have terrible diffusion past a couple of hundred feet. This can be fixed
with some optics. What you ideally want are holographic quality lasers with
optic pieces to refocus, normalize and "parallelize" (a word I made up to
describe the word I forgot) the beam (and hopefully capable of true TEM00
mode).

 As to how many people it would take, that depends on how big a spot you
want to make. I wonder if this person is trying to get a "continuous" spot
or a "pixel" spot. It would take a great many more people to make a
continuous spot than a pixel spot. Since the eye has a very limited
resolution, all that would be necessary would be to paint "billions and
billions" of spots or maybe millions or even thousands of spots.

Brian