Re: RETRO MIRROR SCHEMES

[T.L.G.vanderLinden@student.utwente.nl (Timothy van der Linden)]

To Lee,

>>>IDEA!  Why not skip converting the sunlight and just gather it directly into 
>>>lasers using these huge mirror apparatuses that I'm proposing.  The arrays 
>>>aroundSol would need to be heavy to keep from getting blown away, but that's 
>>>okay.
>
>I mentioned this to Kelly some time ago, but didn't send it to every one
>else. There was an article published in Scientific American about 10 or 15
>years ago where someone had figured out how to make a MECHANICAL (that's
>what you call it when it only uses mirrors)Solar Pumped Laser. Some sort of
>spiral collector/intensifier with flute shaped collimators.
>
>Anyway, without any moving parts it is capagle of generating a visible light
>laser from the Sun the only part I don't get is how you can have a
>polychromatic laser in the first place, since by definition a laser is
>monochromatic...
>
>Anyway, since there is no conversion the only loss would be to thermal
>heating from internal absorption, it should be very efficient. And real
>CHEAP to build.

THIS IS IT, for the last few days I've been thinking about how wonderful it
would be for us to have such a device.

Not only could we use it as a solar collector-laser but even more important
also as retro-mirror!

Do you know a more exact year or title? Anything that would help me to track
down the article?

Timothy