Peter Buschkamp

At 32C3 we shot lasers into space... now it's lasers in space! We look at space- and airborne laser platforms and what practical uses people have come up with (hint: mostly more or less secret communication and military use). We'll also recap the basic physics and boundaries and check if 'pew pew pew' is really gonna cut it (hint: mostly no). To close, we'll have a look at laser based propulsion for space travel and other speculative applications off the beaten path.

Today lasers are routinely flown on space and airborne platforms for scientific, military and telecommunication applications. While they make nice special effects in action and sci-fi movies, there are physical boundaries that guide the use of lasers in space and in surface to air/space scenarios. 'SDI' might not be straight forward, but intercepting airborne vehicles or laser based communication to submerged submarines is no longer science fiction. But can we use it for space travel? Lets see.

The long term survival of the human species requires that we become an interplanetary species. But we must answer two big questions: where are we going, and how do we get there? We explore what scientists know (and don’t know) about humanity’s potential future homes both inside and outside the solar system, and then we’ll dive into the technological challenges of (and potential solutions for) getting humans to and colonizing a new planet.

Long the realm of science fiction, interplanetary colonization is now taken more and more seriously by scientists and space agencies alike as technologies come within reach. We will evaluate obstacles and solutions by looking at two topics: Where to go? and How to get there? Part 1 explores the options that humans have in expanding to new planets. There are now 3,439 exoplanets in 2,569 planetary systems confirmed. We’ll discuss how astronomers find planets, and how they learn about the conditions there. How do we pick a colonization target based on the data we can gather when there is no way of sending probes there and getting information back in reasonable time like we do in our solar system? Part 2 gives an overview of technologies currently available to get humans to other planets, and what that means in terms of humanity’s expansion. We'll also talk about the technology advancements necessary for truly interstellar colonization.

Other people: Liz George

Light of astronomical objects gets distorted as it passes earth’s atmosphere. Adaptive optics can correct this distortion and create images that are as sharp as those taken in space. The correction needs a bright reference star. If there is no such star nearby, an artificial Laser Guide Star can be created in the upper atmosphere.

A lot of clever real time software, hardware and feedback loops steer a deformable mirror to straighten the distorted wavefront. The talk looks at the technologies of this fascinating technique and will also cover the question how to become a laser-rocket-scientist. Also, there will be star-wars like laser pew pew pictures & videos. In the first part I will talk about the background of adaptive optics and how it enables ground-based observations which people though to be impossible only two decades ago. We will look at the building blocks of such a system and how they are combined to work together nicely. The second part will look at a real Laser-AO system, the project I have worked with, ARGOS at the LARGE Binocular Telescope in Arizona. I will present the system in detail and talk about the little things in all the black boxes. Mechanics, electronics, Optics and Software. We will have images and videos of the system at work and look at first test results showing the potential of this system. ARGOS feeds one of three near-infrared multi-object spectrometers that exists on this planet (Instruments name: LUCI). LUCI is used to record light from the universe 11 billion years ago to to answer the question where galaxies came from and how they developed. In the last (somewhat shorter) part I want to briefly talk about what it takes to get into this kind of work, how to become a „laser rocket scientist“. I get this question a lot in Q&A sessions and therefore want to address it right away. There are misconceptions about his type of work and quite a number of people leave the field again – mainly because school and especially university puts up a distorted picture and sometimes questionable promises about careers in science.