4 ms·
Only true if the dust grain is stopped by the craft. For a thin lightsail the grain will probably pass right through without depositing much energy
by archermarks 1y ago
Only true if the dust grain is stopped by the craft. For a thin lightsail the grain will probably pass right through without depositing much energy
- dylan604 1y agoSo it passes through the sail and then hits the spacecraft attached to the sail. Now what? kaboom? small holes in the hull would not be good for the occupants.
- rbanffy 1y agoThe sail is much, much larger than the craft. The odds of that happening are tiny. In any case, we should launch more than one.
- dylan604 1y agomore than one basket for those eggs will be important.
- pfdietz 1y agoWhen it passes through the sail, enough energy is deposited in the grain to explode it, so if there's sufficient distance to the hull the vapor deposits sufficiently low energy/area to be tolerable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipple_shield
- os2warpman 1y agoI wasn't even considering the sail. Most of the designs for a system like this are "chip" designs where a single 1cm x 1cm silicon wafer is towed by the sail. This design prevents the need for lasers so large that they create enough ozone to kill the entire human race. The contents of the chip vary, based on who is speculating, but tend to contain exotic, uninvented, circuitry capable of both harvesting energy from the laser and doing "something" of use besides zipping by the target at 0.2c deaf, dumb, and blind. Sometimes it's even an AI-enhanced swarm! (Shoulda figured out how to work blockchain in there, post-doc guy) Regardless, during the 40 trillion kilometer voyage to Proxima Centauri, that 1x1cm silicon wafer (and the sail) will hit space dust, and numerous other atoms and molecules (including carbon rings) because empty space... isn't.