4 ms·
There seems to be quite a bit of handwaving there. So a "gram-scale" space probe is supposed to contain (1) enough shielding to survive 20 years of travel at 20
by microtherion 10y ago
There seems to be quite a bit of handwaving there. So a "gram-scale" space probe is supposed to contain (1) enough shielding to survive 20 years of travel at 20% of the speed of light (2) sensors good enough to capture useful data during the fraction of a second the probe will be in a decent range of the target and (3) communication equipment to transmit the results back across 4 light years?
- jessriedel 10y agoI think this proposal is very overly optimistic, but it's not like they haven't considered the points you raise. https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3 https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3
- mrfusion 10y agoKeep in mind there will be thousands of them. even if most get destroyed at least a few would make it. Perhaps they could travel single file and block instelar debris for each other. And pool their data to effectively get a longer exposure.
- madaxe_again 10y agoAdditionally smaller craft present a smaller target. You could tip them with a few inches of depleted uranium, which would make a reasonable ablative shield. Maybe. Either way it's an engineering problem, rather than a physical impossibility as others here are saying.
- pif 10y agoHow could you stay within gram-scale with a few inches of uranium shielding?
- madaxe_again 10y ago999g! You'd also stack it with voids, works better to slow projectiles.