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> This veritable speed racer of an interplanetary probe would thus require a mere 31,600 years to reach Proxima Centauri (if indeed it was pointed in the right

> This veritable speed racer of an interplanetary probe would thus require a mere 31,600 years to reach Proxima Centauri (if indeed it was pointed in the right direction, which it isn't). Holy cow, that's multiple times longer than humanity has even existed as a civilization, and in all likelihood it might perish before that probe could even make it there. What a reality check. I don't think incremental improvements are going to cut it for space travel.

a3n 10y ago
So we should send one out now, and hope we're still around when it gets there. And each time we complete development of something better send one of those. Can you imagine how pissed we'd be 31,000 years from now, not having sent whatever we finally determined to be the best we could do, when we could have done it? It may take N thousand years to get something there, but only four years to get data back. It's worth it.
- danbruc 10y ago
  Designing a machine that still works in 31,600 years seems a pretty tough challenge. Even remembering to listen for a signal in 31,600 years is probably already a hard problem.
  - a3n 10y ago
    > Designing a machine that still works in 31,600 years seems a pretty tough challenge. Good point. I'm quite sure we can already point something somewhere and it'll get there, or close, in 31K years. So the real challenge is what you point out. And remembering is maybe even more challenging. So the first one out ought to be very simple. Maybe it just pings home every N days. That would mean that we'd start out listening for it, and perhaps that infrastructure would be taken care of. And maybe that first one would die before it arrives. But if we continue to send something better each time we're able, I think we'd eventually have success. And if we do continue to send things, maybe we'd have an institutional tradition of listening for the original.
    - danbruc 10y ago
      Just a ping from four light years away does not seem worth the effort to me, it seems just slightly above throwing a rock in the direction of Proxima Centauri. At least take a picture. By the way, there is also a thing called wait calculation [1] which deals with this very problem, when should you start an interstellar journey. There is not much of a point to start today if you can cut the travel time in half in, say, a hundred years since you would pretty quickly overtake the mission started today and arrive first despite the fact that you started a hundred years later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation
      - a3n 10y ago
        > Just a ping from four light years away does not seem worth the effort to me, That's all Sputnik was, a ping in orbit. But it was worth doing to get something, anything at all, in orbit. Sputnik itself wasn't important, but the knowledge and experience gained was. You don't not throw a Sputnik up because you know that decades later you'll have the ability to throw up a space station. Sputnik is part of the space station process.

a3n 10y ago

So we should send one out now, and hope we're still around when it gets there. And each time we complete development of something better send one of those. Can you imagine how pissed we'd be 31,000 years from now, not having sent whatever we finally determined to be the best we could do, when we could have done it? It may take N thousand years to get something there, but only four years to get data back. It's worth it.

danbruc 10y ago
Designing a machine that still works in 31,600 years seems a pretty tough challenge. Even remembering to listen for a signal in 31,600 years is probably already a hard problem.
- a3n 10y ago
  > Designing a machine that still works in 31,600 years seems a pretty tough challenge. Good point. I'm quite sure we can already point something somewhere and it'll get there, or close, in 31K years. So the real challenge is what you point out. And remembering is maybe even more challenging. So the first one out ought to be very simple. Maybe it just pings home every N days. That would mean that we'd start out listening for it, and perhaps that infrastructure would be taken care of. And maybe that first one would die before it arrives. But if we continue to send something better each time we're able, I think we'd eventually have success. And if we do continue to send things, maybe we'd have an institutional tradition of listening for the original.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    Just a ping from four light years away does not seem worth the effort to me, it seems just slightly above throwing a rock in the direction of Proxima Centauri. At least take a picture. By the way, there is also a thing called wait calculation [1] which deals with this very problem, when should you start an interstellar journey. There is not much of a point to start today if you can cut the travel time in half in, say, a hundred years since you would pretty quickly overtake the mission started today and arrive first despite the fact that you started a hundred years later. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wait_Calculation
    - a3n 10y ago
      > Just a ping from four light years away does not seem worth the effort to me, That's all Sputnik was, a ping in orbit. But it was worth doing to get something, anything at all, in orbit. Sputnik itself wasn't important, but the knowledge and experience gained was. You don't not throw a Sputnik up because you know that decades later you'll have the ability to throw up a space station. Sputnik is part of the space station process.