2 ms·
Even with FTL you have to know where to go. Let's say you do 100 solar systems per year (going somewhere close to the star and some local jumps to look around.)
by pmontra 4y ago
Even with FTL you have to know where to go. Let's say you do 100 solar systems per year (going somewhere close to the star and some local jumps to look around.) There are 100 billion stars in the Milky Way. It takes a billion years to sequentially scan the galaxy. Optimizations in the search algorithm to cut that number down to 100 years are left as an exercise ;-)
- bottled_poe 4y agoBranching factor of two means around 30 hops to visit every star.
- pmontra 4y ago2^30 probes at the final hop. Maybe those FTL ships will turn out to be cheap to build like in Vance's Demon Princes novels.