The beam spread on the cheap green laser is almost unnoticeable (the slight change in size is me holding the two and shooting at 1/15 shutter speed), but the laser sensor from the CA store spreads greatly as the distance to the subject increases. Here is the laser sensor compared to a cheap laser pointer I got from American Science (ripped it out of the case and hooked it up to a resistor voltage divider to run off the 5v from the CA).Divergence is the increase in laser beam diameter with distance from the aperture from which the beam emerges in any plane that intersect the beam axis.
http://www.htpow.com/300mw-green-high-power-laser-pointer-waterproof-adjustable-holster-p-1038.html
Some laser diode modules feature an adjustable alignment for precise positioning applications.The light emitted from a laser is in a steady, continuous beam.If you shine a laser beam over a long distance, it will spread out almost exactly like a cone. Since this type of beam is typical of most lasers, it is the most common and important.Laser alignment is a measure of the deviation of the optical axis of the laser beam with respect to the mechanical axis of the laser housing.

http://www.htpow.com/high-powered-30000mw-blue-laserpointer-445nm-worlds-brightest-p-1027.html

In addition to improving beam collimation, beam expanders can be used to focus laser beams. The spot sizes are given in units of microns and are calculated using a 0.63mm diameter Red Laser beam at 632.8nm assuming.Examples of the application of the Galilean telescope design to laser beam expanders can be found in several Edmund Optics products, all of which can be used to collimate and focus laser beams. Any handheld lasers are going to be pretty harmless... especially if it was children using the devices.
http://www.htpow.com/laser-beam-dot-sight-htpow-dot-laser-sight-rifle-green-laser-p-1104.html
Pen-shaped lasers do not the same circuit, and their outputs are unstable.By removing from such a laser the collimation lens, the output is spread out in a highly eccentric elliptical profile. We found by random sampling that laser pointers that has the shape ofa bullet generally has a feedback circuit that stabilizes the frequency, giving the output a long coherence length. The lens must be removed very carefully. Heating can destroy the laser; and care must be taken as not to introduce any dust into the laser.

There are standard calculations to calculate the width of a laser pointer beam at a given distance. Depends on the design of the laser in question and whatever optics may be in the LIDAR device.The divergence of a typical police laser seems to currently be somewhere in the 3 mrad range.
http://www.htpow.com/highquality-500mw-burning-waterproof-red-laser-pointer-p-1067.html
If you and a dozen of your friends bought such lasers and pointed them all at the same spot on the moon, it is quite plausible moonwalkers could see it, provided that that ambient light was minimal.So I suspect you’d need a few more orders of magnitude of laser power to make it visible in daylight.Finally, it’s nice to know that astronauts on the International Space Station have in fact observed laser light from the earth. Everything looked so good with this laser diode, and I didn't have time to do several test shots, so I combined a few aspects into one.

There is some evidence of rare minor permanent harm, but low-powered Laser Sight pointers are not seriously hazardous to health.If aimed at a person's eyes, laser pointers can cause temporary disturbances to vision.When pointed at aircraft at night, laser pointers may dazzle and distract pilots, and increasingly strict laws have been passed to ban this. A dot of light from a red laser pointer may be thought to be due to a laser gunsight.Early laser pointers were helium–neon (HeNe) gas lasers and generated laser radiation at 633 nanometers (nm), usually designed to produce a laser beam with an output power under 1 milliwatt (mW). 
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