If GalactiPol is on your tail & you hear the dreaded sound that indicates you've been target locked, Just fire the Space Flak cannon which will emit a shield of mercury droplets to re-direct lasers being fired at you.
With any luck the laser will reflect back into your pursuit.

Actually, I don't know why all those star pilots don't think of putting a mirrored surface on their ships if they're going to get shot at with lasers.
-- Zimmy, Aug 25 2005

Retroreflectors http://physics.ucsd...hy/apollo/lrrr.html
As left on Earth's Moon [csea, Aug 25 2005]

Moon Litter http://www.mswmanag...mw_0407_beyond.html
space junk is out there! [csea, Aug 26 2005]

Cunning. But no use against my asteroid gun, I'm afraid.
-- DrCurry, Aug 25 2005


Reflective droplets will tend to diffuse the incident laser light. What you need is an array of retroreflectors, sometimes called "corner cubes." See [link.]
-- csea, Aug 25 2005


//if they're going to get shot at with lasers.// Because those lasers don't travel anywhere near the speed of light. So who knows what they are really made of.
-- sleeka, Aug 25 2005


Yep, it's a good reason to keep the old girl buffed up nicely.

Sandcasters that shed protective clouds of particles of sand around one's fully operational DeathStar would have the multiple advantages of partially dissipating incoming laser beams, allowing you to see exactly where they are coming from and go some way towards slowing down those pesky x-wings.
-- zen_tom, Aug 25 2005


Whatever you fire back at them would have to be reflective at the frequency of light they're shooting you with. Mercury would work for the visible spectrum but I have no idea how it works beyond either end. That's not a 'no' -- that's an 'I don't know'.

On a related topic, did anybody notice that in Babylon5 (nerd moment) part of the 'defence grid' involved shooting projectiles back along the path of laser beams -- effecitively giving the station very thick local hull plating.
-- st3f, Aug 25 2005


Wouldn't the mercury freeze?
-- DenholmRicshaw, Aug 25 2005


//who knows what they are really made of.//
If they really were lasers, would they be not visible in space as well? (unless it was pointed at your eyes).

[DenholmRicshaw], I thought about the mercury freezing after I posted & was hoping that it is still reflective in a frozen state.
-- Zimmy, Aug 25 2005


//Wouldn't the mercury freeze?//

No, it would 'boil'. Still, that would leave you with an large cloud of mercury atoms that would be pretty nasty to run in to at high sub-light speeds.
-- ConsulFlaminicus, Aug 26 2005


[CF], I believe, you're right. I don't know if this would even work then. I can't find anything specifically dealing with what happens to light passing through mercury vapor.
I wonder if it converts to electricity?

[csea], those retroreflectors would work great affixed to the back of a starship. I was looking at the link and wondering .... Did the astronauts just tear the cover off and throw it down on the ground a few feet away? Lunar Littering?
That's insane. I'm thinking about trying to contact Edgar Mitchell (the only surviving member of Apollo 14) and ask him about that photo.
-- Zimmy, Aug 26 2005


[Zimmy], there's a lot of space junk out there! And it's being added to regularly. See [link].

I remember reading somewhere that shuttle launches have to take into account the orbits of many hundreds (thousands?) of earth-orbiting pieces of junk.
-- csea, Aug 26 2005



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