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Article: Drilling With a Burst of Light
- Article from:
- Mechanical Engineering
- Article date:
- August 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright American Society of Mechanical Engineers Aug 2004. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (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 Arbor, Mich., is developing a new ...