7 ms·

There's a $100 million effort to develop tiny spacecraft that are accelerated to 10%-20% the speed of light with ground-based lasers: https://en.wikipedia.org/w

by sehugg 10y ago

There's a $100 million effort to develop tiny spacecraft that are accelerated to 10%-20% the speed of light with ground-based lasers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

mrfusion 10y ago
This should be the top comment! Not the guy poo pooing on the idea of checking out this planet.
afreak 10y ago
(ignore what I said here)
- zeven7 10y ago
  The laser is only on each device for 10 minutes. And there are 1,000 of them. So the hope is that at laest 1 in 1,000 will make it.
  - dingbat 10y ago
    if even a tiny fraction of those 1000 tiny probes hit that planet at 20% of speed of light, could that pose a problem? it sounds like a shotgun approach, not so figuratively, using pellets loaded with plutonium.
    - jessriedel 10y ago
      The probes would each be only a few grams, so they'd have about 10^13 J of relativistic kinetic energy, or a half kilotons of TNT equivalent. This can be compared with the 15 kilotons for the (small, by modern standard) Little Boy atomic bomb. So it's probably noticeable for any inhabitants in the area, depending on how the energy is dissipated in the atmosphere, but still quite small on the scale of a planet.
      - mikeash 10y ago
        It should be noted that meteors explode with Hiroshima-like force fairly regularly within Earth's atmosphere, on the order of once a decade or so. It happens high up enough that nobody notices beyond an occasional light show. The meteor explosion which hurt a bunch of people in Chelyabinsk a few years back was about 500 kilotons.
        dingbat 10y ago
        cool, good to know that raining down a bunch of probes in this manner would most likely be a pretty light show. still i wonder about the plutonium aspect of this? it might be prudent to first consult with the legal experts and diplomats of the Galactic Council, to clear this type of activity with them first, minimize interpretation of this probing as a hostile interstellar act.
        mikeash 10y ago
        I don't think the plutonium would be enough to have any real effect, although it might irritate the inhabitants if there are any. Certainly, we've put far more plutonium into Earth's atmosphere by blowing up thousands of nuclear bombs in it, and we survived. Clearing it with the Galactic Council definitely sounds like a good idea. Do you have their phone number handy? I seem to have deleted their contact info by accident.
        Stratoscope 10y ago
        And so many of those people were injured because they went to a window to see the spectacle, not knowing about the shock wave that was coming. It made me realize that the civil defense films we watched in the '50s weren't so misguided after all: https://www.google.com/#q=when+you+see+the+white+flash+duck+and+cover https://www.google.com/#q=when+you+see+the+white+flash+duck+...
        mikeash 10y ago
        Indeed, that's pretty much what "duck and cover" was all about. There was even a school teacher in Chelyabinsk who apparently remembered her Cold War drills and had her students take cover, saving them from injury.
- malz 10y ago
  Also at 10% the speed of light the probe zips by the planet in a fraction of a second. There's no slowing down in this scenario.
  - mrfusion 10y ago
    Could they carry mini solar sails to slow down? Solar parachutes if you will. Or if we sent them in single file several seconds apart they could each relay what they see to the ones behind them and then back to us. Effective oh giving us a long exposure.
  - elektropionir 10y ago
    There are ideas for slowing them down and even returning them back to Earth, at least in principle: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=31913 http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=31913 Nothing that could be implemented in any foreseeable future though.
  - sevenless 10y ago
    You can slow down - just that the probe won't remain intact. But perhaps that isn't necessary for the probe to be useful. We can also use these space probes to do geological and atmospheric surveys of the planet when they arrive. Simply: we slam the probe into the planet, a few milliseconds after it transmits the final images. One gram going at 20% of the speed of light has kinetic energy that bears comparison to the Hiroshima bomb. At a steep angle of entry, the huge entry glow will give a reading of the atmospheric molecular makeup. And if we can ionize some of the crust, massive space telescopes can get a spectroscopic measurement of the composition, four light years away.
    - onion2k 10y ago
      Let's hope any alien race living there doesn't have the same idea and send a few probes to smash in to Earth.
      - sevenless 10y ago
        That would be like Christopher Columbus, mid-Atlantic crossing, encountering a gunpowder-equipped Mayan navy going off to conquer Europe. Not likely.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gene-h 10y ago
Today at 2:55 EST Philip Lubin, who is involved with the Starshot project, will present some work on the study he is doing for NASA investigating the feasibility of this. You can watch it live here: http://livestream.com/viewnow/NIAC2016 http://livestream.com/viewnow/NIAC2016
mrfusion 10y ago
After we build the laser it might not cost that much more just to keep a constant stream of these guys going to the planet relaying their information back along the stream. Effectively giving us a streaming feed of what's happening on the planet. A single probe in orbit could obviously do this but with this idea there's no way to slow down.
- aminok 10y ago
  There's a way to slow down: http://www.lunarsail.com/LightSail/rit-1.pdf http://www.lunarsail.com/LightSail/rit-1.pdf >The lightsail is built in two sections, an outer doughtnut- shaped ring, and an inner circular section 30 km in diameter. This 30 km payload section of the sail has a mass of 71 metric tons, including a science payload of 26 metric tons. The remaining, ring-shaped "decel" stage has the mass of 714 metric tons, or ten times the smaller payload "stage". The central payload section of the sail is detached from the larger stage and turned around so that its reflecting surface faces the reflecting surface of the ring-shaped portion (see Fig. 4). At a time 4.3 years earlier, the laser power from the solar system was upgraded to 26 TW (there are 37 years to get ready for this increase in power). The stronger laser beam travels across the space to the larger ring sail. The increased power raises the acceleration of the ring sail to 0.2 m/s2 , and it continues to gain speed. The light reflected from the ring sail is focused onto the smaller sail, now some distance behind. The light rebounds from the 30-km sail, giving it a momentum push opposite to its velocity, and slowing it down. Since the smaller sail is 1/10 the mass of the larger one, its deceleration rate is 2.0 m/s2 , or 0.2 g. The light flux on the smaller sail has increased considerably, but it is only two-thirds of the maximum light flux that the sail can handle.
antiffan 10y ago
This is the coolest project I've heard about in a while. Thanks for sharing!
MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago
The craziest thing to me is that if we sent a generational spaceship there that was expected to take 1,000 years, it seems likely that better technology would allow the next generation of spaceships to get there much faster. So by the time the 1,000 year spaceship arrived, there would already be people there!
- scotty79 10y ago
  It was a theme it this cartoon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Space
- maerF0x0 10y ago
  Or maybe they'd rendezvous and bring them "up to speed" so to speak ?
  - platz 10y ago
    it would be better to just 'seed' the tiny starshot spacecraft with human embryos that could litter the planet and then develop on arrival.
    - jdmichal 10y ago
      See James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear. It involves a post-scarcity civilization seeded in much the way you suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
    - jcoffland 10y ago
      Right because human babies let alone embryos do so well on their own.
      - platz 10y ago
        that's why we also send self-replicating nanobots along with them.
Roboprog 10y ago
Unless "The Moties" send one here, first :-) Yet another comment plugging a story involving some novel interplanetary travel (this one involving a species from a red dwarf): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye
VikingCoder 10y ago
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwisp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwisp 0.20 c
leftandright 10y ago
This is from the same people who announced the "Breakthrough Message", an open competiton with a $1 million dollar prize pool, whose details were "to be announced soon". [1] The press release was made in July 2015, and there has been no communication about it since then. I'm not sure how seriously to take this group. [1] http://www.breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/2 http://www.breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/2
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

by sehugg 10y ago

mrfusion 10y ago

This should be the top comment! Not the guy poo pooing on the idea of checking out this planet.

afreak 10y ago

(ignore what I said here)

zeven7 10y ago
The laser is only on each device for 10 minutes. And there are 1,000 of them. So the hope is that at laest 1 in 1,000 will make it.
- dingbat 10y ago
  if even a tiny fraction of those 1000 tiny probes hit that planet at 20% of speed of light, could that pose a problem? it sounds like a shotgun approach, not so figuratively, using pellets loaded with plutonium.
  - jessriedel 10y ago
    The probes would each be only a few grams, so they'd have about 10^13 J of relativistic kinetic energy, or a half kilotons of TNT equivalent. This can be compared with the 15 kilotons for the (small, by modern standard) Little Boy atomic bomb. So it's probably noticeable for any inhabitants in the area, depending on how the energy is dissipated in the atmosphere, but still quite small on the scale of a planet.
    - mikeash 10y ago
      It should be noted that meteors explode with Hiroshima-like force fairly regularly within Earth's atmosphere, on the order of once a decade or so. It happens high up enough that nobody notices beyond an occasional light show. The meteor explosion which hurt a bunch of people in Chelyabinsk a few years back was about 500 kilotons.
      - dingbat 10y ago
        cool, good to know that raining down a bunch of probes in this manner would most likely be a pretty light show. still i wonder about the plutonium aspect of this? it might be prudent to first consult with the legal experts and diplomats of the Galactic Council, to clear this type of activity with them first, minimize interpretation of this probing as a hostile interstellar act.
        mikeash 10y ago
        I don't think the plutonium would be enough to have any real effect, although it might irritate the inhabitants if there are any. Certainly, we've put far more plutonium into Earth's atmosphere by blowing up thousands of nuclear bombs in it, and we survived. Clearing it with the Galactic Council definitely sounds like a good idea. Do you have their phone number handy? I seem to have deleted their contact info by accident.
      - Stratoscope 10y ago
        And so many of those people were injured because they went to a window to see the spectacle, not knowing about the shock wave that was coming. It made me realize that the civil defense films we watched in the '50s weren't so misguided after all: https://www.google.com/#q=when+you+see+the+white+flash+duck+and+cover https://www.google.com/#q=when+you+see+the+white+flash+duck+...
        mikeash 10y ago
        Indeed, that's pretty much what "duck and cover" was all about. There was even a school teacher in Chelyabinsk who apparently remembered her Cold War drills and had her students take cover, saving them from injury.
malz 10y ago
Also at 10% the speed of light the probe zips by the planet in a fraction of a second. There's no slowing down in this scenario.
- mrfusion 10y ago
  Could they carry mini solar sails to slow down? Solar parachutes if you will. Or if we sent them in single file several seconds apart they could each relay what they see to the ones behind them and then back to us. Effective oh giving us a long exposure.
- elektropionir 10y ago
  There are ideas for slowing them down and even returning them back to Earth, at least in principle: http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=31913 http://www.centauri-dreams.org/?p=31913 Nothing that could be implemented in any foreseeable future though.
- sevenless 10y ago
  You can slow down - just that the probe won't remain intact. But perhaps that isn't necessary for the probe to be useful. We can also use these space probes to do geological and atmospheric surveys of the planet when they arrive. Simply: we slam the probe into the planet, a few milliseconds after it transmits the final images. One gram going at 20% of the speed of light has kinetic energy that bears comparison to the Hiroshima bomb. At a steep angle of entry, the huge entry glow will give a reading of the atmospheric molecular makeup. And if we can ionize some of the crust, massive space telescopes can get a spectroscopic measurement of the composition, four light years away.
  - onion2k 10y ago
    Let's hope any alien race living there doesn't have the same idea and send a few probes to smash in to Earth.
    - sevenless 10y ago
      That would be like Christopher Columbus, mid-Atlantic crossing, encountering a gunpowder-equipped Mayan navy going off to conquer Europe. Not likely.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gene-h 10y ago

Today at 2:55 EST Philip Lubin, who is involved with the Starshot project, will present some work on the study he is doing for NASA investigating the feasibility of this. You can watch it live here: http://livestream.com/viewnow/NIAC2016 http://livestream.com/viewnow/NIAC2016

mrfusion 10y ago

After we build the laser it might not cost that much more just to keep a constant stream of these guys going to the planet relaying their information back along the stream. Effectively giving us a streaming feed of what's happening on the planet. A single probe in orbit could obviously do this but with this idea there's no way to slow down.

aminok 10y ago
There's a way to slow down: http://www.lunarsail.com/LightSail/rit-1.pdf http://www.lunarsail.com/LightSail/rit-1.pdf >The lightsail is built in two sections, an outer doughtnut- shaped ring, and an inner circular section 30 km in diameter. This 30 km payload section of the sail has a mass of 71 metric tons, including a science payload of 26 metric tons. The remaining, ring-shaped "decel" stage has the mass of 714 metric tons, or ten times the smaller payload "stage". The central payload section of the sail is detached from the larger stage and turned around so that its reflecting surface faces the reflecting surface of the ring-shaped portion (see Fig. 4). At a time 4.3 years earlier, the laser power from the solar system was upgraded to 26 TW (there are 37 years to get ready for this increase in power). The stronger laser beam travels across the space to the larger ring sail. The increased power raises the acceleration of the ring sail to 0.2 m/s2 , and it continues to gain speed. The light reflected from the ring sail is focused onto the smaller sail, now some distance behind. The light rebounds from the 30-km sail, giving it a momentum push opposite to its velocity, and slowing it down. Since the smaller sail is 1/10 the mass of the larger one, its deceleration rate is 2.0 m/s2 , or 0.2 g. The light flux on the smaller sail has increased considerably, but it is only two-thirds of the maximum light flux that the sail can handle.

antiffan 10y ago

This is the coolest project I've heard about in a while. Thanks for sharing!

MOARDONGZPLZ 10y ago

The craziest thing to me is that if we sent a generational spaceship there that was expected to take 1,000 years, it seems likely that better technology would allow the next generation of spaceships to get there much faster. So by the time the 1,000 year spaceship arrived, there would already be people there!

scotty79 10y ago
It was a theme it this cartoon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Once_Upon_a_Time..._Space
maerF0x0 10y ago
Or maybe they'd rendezvous and bring them "up to speed" so to speak ?
- platz 10y ago
  it would be better to just 'seed' the tiny starshot spacecraft with human embryos that could litter the planet and then develop on arrival.
  - jdmichal 10y ago
    See James P. Hogan's Voyage from Yesteryear. It involves a post-scarcity civilization seeded in much the way you suggest. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voyage_from_Yesteryear
  - jcoffland 10y ago
    Right because human babies let alone embryos do so well on their own.
    - platz 10y ago
      that's why we also send self-replicating nanobots along with them.

Roboprog 10y ago

Unless "The Moties" send one here, first :-) Yet another comment plugging a story involving some novel interplanetary travel (this one involving a species from a red dwarf): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God%27s_Eye

VikingCoder 10y ago

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwisp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwisp 0.20 c

leftandright 10y ago

This is from the same people who announced the "Breakthrough Message", an open competiton with a $1 million dollar prize pool, whose details were "to be announced soon". [1] The press release was made in July 2015, and there has been no communication about it since then. I'm not sure how seriously to take this group. [1] http://www.breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/2 http://www.breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/2

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]