Loose Rivets
If you loook at my previous reply in this thread
http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthr...hreadid=140569
I have tried to explain some facts about lasers.
I have worked on Lasers since 1978 military,medical and now industrial so have some experience.
Lasers can be absorbed by glass but that tends to be only those in around the 10.6 micrometer bandwith e.g. CO2 lasers.
Glass tends to let through most other bandwidths especially those in the visible spectrum eg Argon blue/green light and Krypton red light.
Contrary to what
Airbubba says 200mW is not high powered enough to get up to an airplane tho this level is used in Opthalmic lasers to treat diabetics by a procedure called diabetic retinopathy and exposures of only 0.1 - 0.2 s to weld up leaky blood vessels within the eye.
Unfotunately old scientific lasers of upto 30W power in the visible spectrum are also available to joe public and with the right optics and a bit of knowledge could easily illuminate a airplane cockpit and cause eye damage.
IMHO these Laser systems should have a restriction on who can buy them.eg a licence.