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Article: Drilling with a burst of light.(computing)(Brief Article)
- Article from:
- Mechanical Engineering-CIME
- Article date:
- August 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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DRILLING VERY PRECISE HOLES is time-consuming. That's a problem for the Missile Defense Agency's Airborne Laser program, which needs about 24 million holes drilled into the laser's injector heads. On a single workstation, at a rate of one hole per minute, that task could take up to 46 years.
The airborne laser is a high-energy, chemical oxygen-iodine laser carried aboard a modified Boeing 747-400F freighter. It will operate alone, above the clouds, and locate and track missiles in the boost phase of their flights, then point and fire the high-energy laser, destroying enemy missiles near their launch areas.
To speed up the drilling, Clark-MXR Inc. of Ann ...