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Okay, so what I read from others is that stopping is gonna be a PITA -- so maybe Mars isn't the best target.. Why not send some huge telescope in the direction

Okay, so what I read from others is that stopping is gonna be a PITA -- so maybe Mars isn't the best target.. Why not send some huge telescope in the direction of that solar system that looks like it has an Alien Megastructure- - get as close as we can to that thing and take closer pictures of it to find out what's really going on (and other parts of the galaxy) -- imagine having a telescope like a couple solar systems away sending back data to us? -- we may to create some sort of galactic internet though - maybe using lasers and relay stations? (I honestly have no clue... we'd want to get data back and it to NOT take 50 years per data dump.) ..

dalke 11y ago
It's likely very much easier to build a telescope array in this solar system than to send a telescope "a couple solar systems away". KIC 8462852 is 1480 light years away. At 10% light speed it would take over 10,000 years to get within a few solar systems of the star. On the other hand, a space-based interferometer with a baseline of 15 AU would have an angular resolution of: 1.22 * 500 nm / (15 AU) = 2.7E-19 radians giving the ability to see things at KIC 8462852 which are 1480 light years * 2.7E-19 = 3 meters across That's also fantastically advanced, but working backwards, to see objects 100km in size: (1.22 * 500 nm) / (100km / 1480 light years) = ~100,000 km I think we can pull that off within 1,000 years, much less 10,000.