BTW, I don't know if anyone here has contact with the folks who run this site: Laser Pointer Safety - Laser safety calculations
The calculations on that page are wrong. Specifically:
Most of the math above is wrong. See page 13 of the AC70-1 document here for the correct calculations...
uhh, just to be clear, if any of these describes your laser operation at all then you should really do an FDA/FAA process:
- You are shooting a high powered laser into the sky with an unknown divergence, location and power.
- If you are doing a laser show or demonstration laser. This...
In fact, I think we agree completely. Our laser was not a "demonstration laser"; it had no galvos, was not a "laser pointer", was a fixed beam going straight up in a fixed configuration and was for science. If we *could* have done an FDA process we would have, but due to the nature of this...
Thanks for the kind words about our laser. To answer some questions:
- You are not required to have FAA clearance, but it's a really good idea. We go into detail about this process here: Hackerbot Labs » Blog Archive » Photonic Beam: Safety and Regulatory Aspects
- The total output power...