{"id":861,"date":"2007-11-08T19:10:11","date_gmt":"2007-11-09T00:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=861"},"modified":"2007-11-08T19:14:49","modified_gmt":"2007-11-09T00:14:49","slug":"lasermotive-qualification-attempt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/?p=861","title":{"rendered":"LaserMotive Qualification attempt"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>When LaserMotive attempted to qualify on the night of the 18th, they invited me\u00a0out onto the Launch pad\u00a0to view and video tape the proceedings.\u00a0 When all was said and done, however, I couldn’t find the video I had taken of the proceedings.\u00a0 After some hunting around, I concluded that I had just screwed up somehow and lost the video or had mistakenly hit the “off” switch or something…\u00a0 However, a couple of days ago, I finished compiling\u00a0a catalog of all the videos I had taken and, lo and behold, there it was – I had misfiled it into the wrong date subdirectory in my video collection of the Games.<\/p>\n

<\/a>As you all know, two laser-powered teams entered the Games this year, USST and LaserMotive.\u00a0 The difference between the way the two set up was quite stark.\u00a0 Bryan Laubscher, safety officer for the Games and all-around Space Elevator guy, put it very well; “USST brought a system.\u00a0 LaserMotive brought a Lab.”\u00a0 I’m not knocking or denigrating LaserMotive or their attempt in any way, but they\u00a0had not spent\u00a0enough time\u00a0on the setup and takedown\u00a0preparation that USST (and others) had done and, in the end, it contributed greatly to their failure\u00a0to qualify for the prize.<\/p>\n

The video I took of their attempt follows.\u00a0 It shows the scene, at night, inside the LaserMotive “Lab” as they attempted to qualify.\u00a0 For the 30 or so minutes prior to this, LaserMotive had been setting up their system.\u00a0 When Jordin Kare, the LaserMotive Laser expert spoke the words “Lasers coming on”, I started taking the video.<\/p>\n

There was a “cracking sound” and a cloud of smoke and, well, you can see the rest.<\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=AphwMxApRGQ[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

You can clearly see the laser beams as they are projected onto the mirror.<\/p>\n

I don’t mind admitting that the smoke and the “cracking” sound scared the crap out of me.\u00a0 It brought back a very unpleasant memory.\u00a0 In a previous job, I was in charge of all Software Development at a company called InFlight Phone Corporation.\u00a0 Saudia Airlines, the national airlines of Saudi Arabia, was a potential client of ours.\u00a0 I had flown over there, with a couple of other people from our company, to do some flight testing and certification of our equipment on a 747.\u00a0 There were two groups of us doing this.\u00a0 This first was Honeywell and the Ball Antenna Group, testing and certifying a satellite antenna.\u00a0 All went well for them.\u00a0 The 747 returned to Jeddah airport, did a “touch-and-go” (if you haven’t experienced one of these in a 747, well, there are no words to describe it) and then climbed to 20,000 feet to test our equipment.\u00a0 When they turned it on, I heard a “cracking noise” and blue smoke quickly filled the cabin.\u00a0 This is NOT what you want to see in an airplane flying at 20,000 feet.\u00a0 The pilots got the plane back to the airport and landed as quickly as possible.\u00a0 Some engineers were waiting and immediately boarded the plane.\u00a0 After a quick look in the cockpit, they concluded that the previous maintenance crew had left a wire hanging\u00a0across\u00a0the main and an auxiliary power bus.\u00a0 This auxiliary power bus was what powered our equipment.\u00a0 When they turned it on, it shorted out, causing the noise and smoke.\u00a0 I knew enough Arabic to know most of the obscenities that the pilot and co-pilot were screaming at the maintenance crew as they left the aircraft.<\/p>\n

One more LaserMotive video – this was taken while they were doing an alignment check of their lasers.<\/p>\n

[youtube]http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=zJhWvt8Tlx0[\/youtube]<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

The first of the two pictures is of part of their\u00a0system, indoors, while being worked on.\u00a0 The second is of the Laser Safety goggles that LaserMotive gave me to wear while recording their work.\u00a0 I put a 3×5 card behind the lens so that you can clearly see the “spec’s specs” \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

Their laser ran a 808 nanometers – you can see that the goggles are rated from between 804 and 830 nanometers and thus appropriate for their system.<\/p>\n

As always, click on the thumbnail for a larger version of the pictures.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When LaserMotive attempted to qualify on the night of the 18th, they invited me\u00a0out onto the Launch pad\u00a0to view and video tape the proceedings.\u00a0 When all was said and done, however, I couldn’t find the video I had taken of the proceedings.\u00a0 After some hunting around, I concluded that I had just screwed up somehow […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spaceelevatorcompetitions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spaceelevatorblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}