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Interferometry requires stable satellites and precise measurements of position. That require larger size for the stability and lots of sophisticated instruments

Interferometry requires stable satellites and precise measurements of position. That require larger size for the stability and lots of sophisticated instruments. Lots of little telescopes cannot see dim objects. Notice how much more the JMST is seeing over Hubble because of the larger mirror. There is minimum sensitivity of sensor and need to give it more light from big mirror. 1m mirror will never see a faint galaxy even if there is a thousand of them. Also, 1m mirrors are not cheap. Mesh antenna would be useless. It needs to be a rigid dish of some size to reach across the Solar System. It also needs quite a bit of power to reach that far. Solar sails and rockets take up space, quite a lot of space compared to payload. Your thousands of hundred dollar probes would be hundreds of hundred dollar probes attached to thousand dolllar rockets. There are also scaling factors where thinks don't work beyond certain size. SpaceX costs less because of mass produced larger size. You are the one that brought up tons of little probes. Cheap access to space means lots of medium probes are feasible. But medium probes cost money which means less sensitive to cheap access to space. > Getting them up to speed of this object is beyond our technology. This post is about interstellar object. I wasn't sure if you meant Solar System probe, one going that speed, or one going interstellar distances.

b112 2y ago
What you're missing here is, the way you change all of your concerns, is to game alternative solutions at small size, and then test them. We literally could not cost effectively do so before. We can now. With weekly launches and vigorous testing, issues can be knocked down. Dev paths can be tried. Yet the perception I'm getting on this side of the screen is "we cannot do that, it's impossible to ever do that, don't even ever try" This is a recipe to halt all scientific progress. I don't think this is your intention, but that seems to be your argument. EG, you're arguing from "we can't do this because currently we don't know how to", so "oh well, that won't ever work".

b112 2y ago

What you're missing here is, the way you change all of your concerns, is to game alternative solutions at small size, and then test them. We literally could not cost effectively do so before. We can now. With weekly launches and vigorous testing, issues can be knocked down. Dev paths can be tried. Yet the perception I'm getting on this side of the screen is "we cannot do that, it's impossible to ever do that, don't even ever try" This is a recipe to halt all scientific progress. I don't think this is your intention, but that seems to be your argument. EG, you're arguing from "we can't do this because currently we don't know how to", so "oh well, that won't ever work".