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This would be a decades long project. You don't just have to get the probe there. (And which probe? You have to design and build it first.) You have to get it
by cgriswald 3y ago
This would be a decades long project.
You don't just have to get the probe there. (And which probe? You have to design and build it first.) You have to get it there, have it get data, and have the data come back. Otherwise you've just thrown a rock, which, yeah, if we spent a fortune we could certainly throw a rock out vast distances very quickly.
So, you either:
Do a flyby, which requires a slower speed. New Horizon's speed was good for gathering data from Pluto and sending it all back. The hypothesized PBH is small enough to fit in your duffle and probably much darker.
Enter orbit. Easy enough with a 5-10M object. But the orbit has to be a useful orbit. So either you burn a tremendous amount of delta-v to reduce your tremendous speed so you get a compact-enough orbit; which requires even more energy to get out there, or you craft the orbit such that the object itself helps slow you: but that takes time and more speed means more time.