Would this be possible ?http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/04/breakthrough-starshot-announces-plans-to-send-ship-to-alpha-centauri/
>>8000264
Sure its possible, it will just take fucking ages
>Arstechnica
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/science/alpha-centauri-breakthrough-starshot-yuri-milner-stephen-hawking.html
>>8000288
>>8000294
>Nytimes
>>8000276
/thread
>>8000316
would only take 20 years
>>8000380
no it would only take one second
These laser propelled sails at least don't break any fundamental laws of physics.
http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/projects/directed-energy-interstellar-precursors
So I'd say its' a better idea then anything else space freaks came up with so far. Even if it works it would only allow fly by missions.
>>8000819
All I wanna know is how the frog are they gonna beam back the data to us? I could probably send my smartphone to Alpha Centauri if i wanted to, but it would be a stupid idea if i can't receive the pics here on earth. If those tiny low-power spacecraft send a signal back to earth, wouldn't we need a satellite receiver the size of the freaking solar system or something to pick up the signal?
>>8000276
>it will just take fucking ages
Just once, try not to be such a child:
>20 years after leaving Earth
http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2016/04/12/Yuri-Milner-and-Stephen-Hawking-announce-Breakthrough-Starshot/7031460489701/
>>8000854
By sending it back focused at our solar system.
>>8000861
Duh. But how weak is the signal going to be?
>>8000264
>Propulsion will be outsourced
>to a facility on Earth.
Moon Base would be better (no atmospheric scattering) but more expensive.
>>8000862
That's actually no issue, with our current equipment we can recieve the signal, as long as sufficient equipment is pointed at it, also the actual reciever would be build in the 24 years the mission takes, with the objetive of using the latest tech avaliable
>>8000865
>as long as sufficient equipment is pointed at it
Do they have the calculation as to what that equipment needs to be?
>the actual receiver would be build in the 24 years the mission takes
That is a very good point. But we need the calculation first.
>>8000882
Sweet. Thanks for the links bro :)
>>8000380
> would only take 20 years
in the probes time reference
>>8000264
It seems like it would take many days to accelerate
the probe. Can the laser accurately focus on the sail for that duration ?
>>8000966
No in our time plane d-brane
>>8000966
Which would be almost identical to ours given a speed of 0.2c.
>>8000264
Sounds like solar roadways all over again.
Neat Idea, but way too many technical hurdles to be practically implemented.
Probably a scam for funding (just like solar roadways).
And even if it worked, why Alpha Centauri?
Assuming no planets, what are we taking pictures of?
Would this give us significant advantage over remote observation?
>>8001157
why does this exist?
>>8000264
>$100 million
That's cheap compared to the past projects and technologies.
>Each device would cost roughly the same as a high-end smartphone to make, allowing a massive number to be sent on the journey
a cloud of these could make pretty good analysis
>20 percent the speed of light in just a matter of minutes
>it would take only three days for these craft to reach Pluto, and we could drive one right into Saturn's rings to sample the material there
Sounds good to me, worth trying.
>>8001157
Not really a scam for founding, since a billionaire is doing it with his own money.
It's more likely that said billionaire is retarded.
>>8001157
>And even if it worked, why Alpha Centauri?
Once you got it they can send probes to all nearby stars. And they will.
Alpha Centauri is just nearby and everyone knows about it. So it's what they tell press and public.
>>8001157
>solar roadways
I've never ever heard of this before.
>You will see man reach Alpha Centauri in your lifetime
>>8000968
Nope with 100 GW of laser the acceleration takes about 2-10 minutes
>>8001690
>Nope with 100 GW of laser the acceleration takes about 2-10 minutes
How will a solar sail:
a) Not burn up under the laser's intensity
b) Withstand what is likely several hundred G's of force to accelerate to .2C in 10 minutes.
>>8001825
A) Really efficient mirrors
B) F = ma, m is like a gram and F is spread out over a large area (16 m^2). If you do the math, pressure is like 10s of pascals
>>8001690
> 100 GW of laser
What is the estimated actual power consumption of such a device ?
>>8001849
More than 100 GW cause lasers are inefficient yo. Like 64% electrical to optical. And there will be atmospheric losses. But it's only for like 2 minutes or something, so provided you can store enough energy to run the lasers for 2 minutes you're good.
In my opinion a fuckload of flywheels oughta do the trick, but I have not done the math yet.
>>8001864
> 100GW
> run the lasers for 2 minutes
Wouldn't that be like the output from a hundred nuclear power plants in parallel ?
>>8001892
Yeah, but only for 2 minutes. Assuming 50% efficiency you need about 0.38 * the store energy of the little boy bomb.
Yes it will be a challenge to store this much energy, but it can be done
>>8000264
If this were all done with known absolutely feasible today technology, how fast, is it estimated, could a small probe be accelerated to in 10 min ?
Any math done/predictions on the effects of adjusting course at 0.2c? Wouldn't that be catastropic for such a gentle craft? Also, dust and micrometeorites. How are they going to circumvent the chance for the lightsail being shredded to pieces during the acceleration phase? If the concept of nanoprobe proves worthwhile I think we could use them to map the Oort cloud albeit at lower speeds (lower power required too).
>>8002080
Yah m8 mapping out the oort cloud would be pretty cool. Or heck launching a bunch of them at pluto or other dwarf planets until we've mapped them all
>>8001243
It was a well known IndieGoGo crowdfunding project.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlTA3rnpgzU
Another possibility for future nanoprobe endeavours:
>1st wave maps intrasolar objects from inner belt to furthest reaches of the Oort
>2nd wave prospects the objects for best mining opportunities; upon finding suitable targets they could crash land on them as to "paint" them, pinging back the location with radio
>3rd wave sends self-replicating nanofabricators that too crash land on targets, replicate until sufficent infrastructure is built and then either begin mining or install thrusters on targets to nudge them towards Earth orbit or both
>4th wave would consist of actual ships that would assist with approach and mining once the targets would get close enough (I guess Mars?)
Also, could lightsails double up as solar energy collectors? How useful would that be?
>>8002352
1. How do you build nanofabricators
2. How do you power them in the oort cloud?
3. Why even bother with crap in the oort cloud of you're gonna move it to the inner solar system.
Probably most useful to be ramming probes into solar objects to get info on their internal composition, like they've done to the moon a few times
How do I airbrake at 0.2C?
Wouldn't it be better to launch a couple of lasers with photovoltaic panels into the sun's obrit and shoot the vessel for a long time, accelerating it slowly but to enourmous speeds?
How precise can lasers get? Could we ever build the lasers that shoot the probe when it's 4 lightyears away? Then it should have solar sails in a system like a caravel and travel not straight to the targer but in an angle. So we could slow it down at the end of the travel.
>>8003101
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po2yfVXuSNo
very efficiently
>>8003151
Lasers are heavy. Heavy is expensive. It would be better though.
>> 4 light years away
You'd need a big lens to focus the lasers like really far out man. Causes lasers beams eventually disperse.
Pic very related.
>>8003214
4LY BLAZE IT FAGGOT
We shouldn't be signalling our presence to anyone outside the solar system. At least until we are capable of defending our selves against something or someone that can travel between stars.
>>8003101
you don't, that's why it's a flyby mission, it won't get in a pretty orbit around a centauri planet.
>>8003248
Why go into orbit anon? Just shoot it at said hypothetical planet and aim a nice big spectroscope. The fireworks should give us a decent understanding of whatever the planet was made of.(sadly yield is less than little boy)
>>8003243
This is the first step to building a relativistic bombing machine
>>8003259
Good lucky aiming those tiny things without propulsion on an invisible planet.
>>8003259
>Why go into orbit anon?
To start replicating the nanobots and unfreze the sperm becoming multisolar species.
>>8003291
Easy. Just make your self-replicating nanobots capable of withstanding impact. Store human.rar on the nanobots and decompress it when you get there. Shit man, whole human genome is like 4 gigs uncompressed. If you have self-replicating nanomachines capable of building and maintaining artificial wombs why wouldn't they be able synth up a ready 2 go embryo from stored data?
>>8000882
Looks like I got some new reading material...
>>8003309
I added the sperm thing cause it's shorter and kinda poetic.
You don't need to store all the data anyway. Just need the plans for an antena.
>4 gigs uncompressed
Just imagined recreating a human from lossy DNA compression.
>>8000264
Ayys will see us trying to propel something at relativistic and get their jimmies rustled.
>>8003347
>>Just imagined recreating a human from lossy DNA compression.
It's a heck of a lot better than moving analog embryos at percentages of c. If you keep everything digital, you can correct for errors when you get there.
Second if you have frickin' nanomachines then you can store a fuckload of data in a very compact space. If you can make tiny gears and shit, then you can make a really tiny compact disk or something, where at bits are represented by an atom being there or not. You probably have enough room to store DNA.rar, along with instructions on how to make an embryo from scratch.
>>8003151
Couldn't they just give it an initial push that brings the probe at speeds fast enough for it in order to reach alpha centauri simply by inertia and then let alpha centauri's gravity do the rest of the job? I doubt they have any plan to snipe the probe after it leaves sol, it doesn't sound feasible to me, if we had such precise technologies then there would be no problem confirming or debunking the infamous planet x.
>>8000862
>how weak is the signal
not nearly as weak as your intellect
>>8003436
> let alpha centauri's gravity do the rest of the job
Even in a multiple star system no gravitational assist would slow you down enough from 0,2C
>>8001157
>way too many technical hurrrdles
GTFO hurr-durrdles
>>8001243
>I've never ever heard of this
duh
>>8001189
The project is estimated to cost 5-10 billion, the guy is just throwing down 100 million to attract other investors.
It would take an estimated 20 years of planning, 20 years of spaceflight and 4 years to hear back.
>>8003466
I didn't mean to slow down but the opposite, won't the probe lose inertia due to the atoms that it will inevitably crash into during its travel to alpha centauri? even if it gets pushed at an initial 0,2 C speed, won't it take longer than 20 years to reach the star anyway?
I didn't think about the slow down process tbqh, I guess they'd use some sort one-time use reverse propulsion before it gets too close to the star, then it can take its time to get in orbit around it, if that's their plan, but since these things are supposed to be cheap, they can just send a cloud of these probes every n weeks and corss-analyze the results from all the different clouds.
>>8003490
Gravity outside solar systems would have marginal effect (inverse square). Btw. you could then calculate the gravity from our sun and every solar system nearby.
>atoms that it will inevitably crash into during its travel
Since we've never travelled that fast and that far, we can't be sure what will happen. I think the outcome would be binary - probe crashes and is destroyed or nothing happens during entire journey.
They plan to just fly by but why stop there in planning?
>>8003436
> Couldn't they just give it an initial push that brings the probe at speeds fast enough for it in order to reach alpha centauri simply by inertia
That's exactly what they want to do.
>>8003490
> some sort one-time use reverse propulsion before it gets too close to the star
Feasibility problem. The energies used to accelerate the probe are enormous and you would need the same to decelerate at the destination.
>>8003490
> won't the probe lose inertia due to the atoms that it will inevitably crash into during its travel to alpha centauri?
Not enough to significantly slow down. A large particle(s) could destroy it though.
>>8003243
Too late.
Tell-tale electromagnetic signatures from earth
are already a hazard emanating into space.
If you consider the last century as the first
truly artificial radio emitting period, then any advanced intelligence within a 100 light year radius should already know we are here.
>>8003697
No one has yet proven some kind of warp drive routine interstellar travel is feasible so I wouldn't worry too much.
Why would we send it to a star?
>>8003709
because it sounds cool and gets people interested, the same technology can be used within our solar system too of course, that will probably be the main focus anyway, to reach any stars it takes decades and there're no close-term results, I guess projects like these need to always provide some sort of results in order to keep going, even if it's a private initiative like in this case.
>>8003697
>any advanced intelligence within a 100 light year radius should already know we are here.
Not necessarily.
Even with Arecibo, we wouldn't be able to detect our own signals from more than about 0.3 LY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox#Humans_are_not_listening_properly
>with a radio telescope as sensitive as the Arecibo Observatory, Earth's television and radio broadcasts would only be detectable at distances up to 0.3 light-years
Because of the inverse square law, aliens 30 light years out would only see a signal one ten thousandth as strong as our own minimum detection level.
At a hundred LY, they'd need equipment well over 100 thousand time s as sensitive as Arecibo to detect our current signals, but they're currently working with 1916 level signals.
And there's no guarantee they're listening, either.
Besides, there's only about 500 stars in a hundred light year radius, and only 15 planets from Wikipedia's list of potentially habitable exoplanets.
There's a good chance there are no E.T.s in that range.
>>8003747
>and only 15 planets from Wikipedia's list of potentially habitable exoplanets.
Update: 13 of the 15 orbit red dwarf stars, and the two that don't both have an "earth similarity index" about the same as Venus.
There's a good chance there's nobody within earshot.
And even if there were people living in orbit of Alpha Centauri, they probably wouldn't notice a handful of gram-weight silicon chips drifting by at 0.2C.
>>8003780
Well haven't they revised the opinion that Red Dwarfs are unsuitable for life, though? I'm pretty sure I heard that somewhere.
>>8003788
>Well haven't they revised the opinion that Red Dwarfs are unsuitable for life, though?
We won't really know until we get out there.
Some people like them for life because they last a really long time.
We've already used up 80% of the time that Earth can have liquid water oceans.
On the other hand, a planet would have to be pretty damn close to a red dwarf to have liquid water oceans. So close they would be subject to tidal locking (one face always toward the sun) and exposure to solar flares.
There are other problems too...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitability_of_red_dwarf_systems
The talk about AC and 0.2C traveling is so far fetched.
The array they can start building in near future will be 1000 times less powerful than they need for declared speed, at best.
But the microsat looks amazing, it can definitely revolutionize solar system exploration.
