4 ms·
At 1/5th of speed of light the probes would cover 1AU in less than an hour, so the visit in the area would be extremely brief. Is there actually a way to get an
by exitb 4y ago
At 1/5th of speed of light the probes would cover 1AU in less than an hour, so the visit in the area would be extremely brief. Is there actually a way to get any meaningful data out of it? Or is it just so we can say that we've "been" there?
- rthomas6 4y agoI wonder if it could unfurl a light sail when it got most of the way there to slow it down. Is that feasible?
- exitb 4y agoInteresting idea, but I don't think the sail would be nearly enough to counteract the gravitational acceleration caused by getting near the target system, let alone losing enough speed to enter an orbit.
- KineticLensman 4y ago>> Each spacecraft would be the size of a DVD disc Not much room for a light sail large enough to fully offset the power of the launch lasers.
- kadoban 4y agoIn short: no. It'd need to slow down enough to counter-act years worth of a laser specifically making it go faster. Without a laser on the other end, really no shot.
- SideburnsOfDoom 4y agoRegardless of travel speed, it would take a lot of energy to get matter or even any identifiable bits of data back from Alpha Centauri to here. I don't see any discussion of how they propose to tackle that problem.
- ncmncm 4y agoIt is never even hinted how any information could ever be communicated back to Earth. It makes me think the whole project is not serious, like launching Voyager with no Deep Space Network to listen. Are they hoping that over the 40 years it takes to get there, a solar-system-sized radio telescope would be built to listen? Even with that it is implausible.
- simonh 4y agoIIRC the idea is to send a chain of probes at regular intervals, and the probes would relay signals back along the chain.
- ncmncm 4y agoSo, even less plausible than a solar-system-sized radio telescope.
- skykooler 4y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot#Laser_data_transmitter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot#Laser_da..., the probes should be able to talk to a 30-meter telescope on earth using lasers. The data rates are very low, of course, but that can be handled by making sure the probe has enough storage for its few-hour-long transit of the system and then transmitting that back over the following months.
- ncmncm 4y agoHow do they get the laser out there? What powers it?
- 0xf00ff00f 4y agoFrom https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.08940.pdf https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/2005/2005.08940.pdf > The sailcraft transmits 100 Watts, deriving its power from a 700-Watt hydrogen beam that is normally incident on the sailcraft when it faces Earth. This hydrogen beam is simply a manifestation of the interstellar medium, incident on the sailcraft at 0.2 c. From https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.01306.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.01306.pdf > One way to tap the sailcraft’s kinetic energy could be via the interstellar medium: The Local Interstellar Cloud is primarily composed of 0.3 atoms/cm3 of partially ionized hydrogen. From the sailcraft’s perspective traveling at cruise velocity, this manifests as a monochromatic hydrogen beam that is incident from the direction of travel, having a combined kinetic energy of 55W m−2, or 0.7 kW over the sail’s area if it faces the direction of travel. The report for Starlight suggests a RTG: https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/roadmap_to_interstellar_flight_tagged.pdf https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/roadmap...
- UberFly 4y agoI was thinking the same thing. That part seems like an afterthought. The real interesting part is the laser propulsion.
- Tepix 4y agoThe answer is to send not one probe, but many (thousands). If every probe manages to capture and transmit a couple dozen pictures while it is within the interesting range, it adds up. Also these probes could use each other as relays if we send a long string of them towards one destination.
- ianai 4y agoYeah. What I’d really like is proposals/discussion around intrastellar travel infrastructure like this. Park sources of light and coms at certain key locations around the solar system to enable faster traffic. Maybe hollow out some larger asteroids for habitats.
- fallingknife 4y agoIf you are able to determine orbital parameters of planets we'll enough, that would be more than enough time to get much better pictures of exoplanets than any telescope.