3 ms·

The general principle is sound but the engineering is rather a problem. Assuming the launcher is solved (railgun, light gas gun, whatever), and a giant dish to

The general principle is sound but the engineering is rather a problem. Assuming the launcher is solved (railgun, light gas gun, whatever), and a giant dish to pick up the even tinier then usual signals (maybe the DSN is already enough even, but the US already knows how to build an Orion satellite, so a giant space-based dish isn't impossible), what I would guess to be the sticking points would be the probes themselves. Each one needs whatever sensors, but more importantly, the auxiliary stuff to last years or decades in transit: in particular power supplies, heaters (=power!) if you can't make your electronics survive constant cryogenic temperatures, as well as comms amongst themselves to organise the mesh and high-gain comms back to Earth. Maybe the worst of that could be solved with a nuclear power supply and then it's basically "just" radio and software design. I also don't think you'd use onmidirectional mesh comms, you can get a lot of milage (literally) out of a phased array that can steer the beam at each target, plus it also becomes a bonus multistatic radar network.

stevenAthompson 1y ago
>the engineering is rather a problem I suppose that's my point. It's really just a series of maybe-not-that-easily solvable engineering problems, and it would allow us to not only explore further but to do it at a relatively low cost and with the ability to "upgrade" the network gradually as each generation of probe improves. More importantly, it would allow us to finally get around that pesky rocket equation and do it cheaply enough that we might actually get political buy-in. > nuclear power supply This was my exact thought, a small RTG power supply in each could provide enough power for hundreds of years with no moving parts. Not enough for billion mile transmitters anymore, but now they don't have to be. > phased array that can steer the beam at each target That's a great idea, and like most of the individual pieces of the plan it's kind of a thing we already know how to do. Sure, you could dedicate the next decade to solving it well, but you COULD solve it today with variations on off the shelf systems. Really, the power source and antenna design are just a few of several hundred (thousands?) of engineering problems that would need to be solved, but all of the engineering challenges I can think of are solvable with variations on current tech. The only reason it isn't being done is that nobody is doing it.

stevenAthompson 1y ago

>the engineering is rather a problem I suppose that's my point. It's really just a series of maybe-not-that-easily solvable engineering problems, and it would allow us to not only explore further but to do it at a relatively low cost and with the ability to "upgrade" the network gradually as each generation of probe improves. More importantly, it would allow us to finally get around that pesky rocket equation and do it cheaply enough that we might actually get political buy-in. > nuclear power supply This was my exact thought, a small RTG power supply in each could provide enough power for hundreds of years with no moving parts. Not enough for billion mile transmitters anymore, but now they don't have to be. > phased array that can steer the beam at each target That's a great idea, and like most of the individual pieces of the plan it's kind of a thing we already know how to do. Sure, you could dedicate the next decade to solving it well, but you COULD solve it today with variations on off the shelf systems. Really, the power source and antenna design are just a few of several hundred (thousands?) of engineering problems that would need to be solved, but all of the engineering challenges I can think of are solvable with variations on current tech. The only reason it isn't being done is that nobody is doing it.