Posted on 06/21/2018 10:43:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The term “moonshot” is sometimes invoked to denote a project so outrageously ambitious that it can only be described by comparing it to the Apollo 11 mission to land the first human on the Moon. The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative transcends the moonshot descriptor because its purpose goes far beyond the Moon. The aptly-named project seeks to travel to the nearest stars.
The brainchild of Russian-born tech entrepreneur billionaire Yuri Milner, Breakthrough Starshot was announced in April 2016 at a press conference joined by renowned physicists including Stephen Hawking and Freeman Dyson. While still early, the current vision is that thousands of wafer-sized chips attached to large, silver lightsails will be placed into Earth orbit and accelerated by the pressure of an intense Earth-based laser hitting the lightsail.
After just two minutes of being driven by the laser, the spacecraft will be traveling at one-fifth the speed of light—a thousand times faster than any macroscopic object has ever achieved.
Each craft will coast for 20 years and collect scientific data about interstellar space. Upon reaching the planets near the Alpha Centauri star system, an the onboard digital camera will take high-resolution pictures and send these back to Earth, providing the first glimpse of our closest planetary neighbors. In addition to scientific knowledge, we may learn whether these planets are suitable for human colonization.
The team behind Breakthrough Starshot is as impressive as the technology. The board of directors includes Milner, Hawking, and Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg. The executive director is S. Pete Worden, former director of NASA Ames Research Center. A number of prominent scientists, including Nobel and Breakthrough Laureates, are serving as advisors to the project, and Milner has promised $100 million of his own funds to begin work....
(Excerpt) Read more at singularityhub.com ...
Uh...yeah, two minutes from rest to 37,000 mph. Let’s just say that’s a lot of acceleration and leave it at that. May have to be a few advances in materials technology before that’s going to happen.
“Just plug in the numbers for those understand weight, velocity and energy. This is total crap science not worthy of discussion.”
I don’t think it even rises to that level. It’s not even good science fiction. At least science fiction comes up with novel ideas that allow the conventional rules to be broken or bent.
The g-forces alone would disintegrate any physical object accelerated at such a rate. At one g, it would take several weeks to reach one fifth of the speed of light. Doing so in a few seconds simply can not be done with any technology known today. The object being accelerated would be destroyed down to the cellular level.
Even if this could be achieved by a less rapid acceleration over a few months, there will be no way to slow the object down. How does photography work at 0.2 c?
Milner? Don't know much about Milner but he appears to be the money guy.
Hawking? He's dead, Jim.
Suckerberg? Impressive? Are you kidding?
Worden? Was he one of those that made NASA's mission to be an outreach to Muslims?
No. They're claiming 37,000 miles per second, not per hour.
Elon Musk is not involved in the Breakthrough Starshot Initiative.
Given the state of Europe, and the fierce battle we are fighting in America, it may be that the future won't look even as good as the Planet of the Apes, but instead the world will be ruled by those with a lower IQ than even the late Koko.
Forgot to add this, no macroscopic object launched from earth has ever achieved even a fraction of this speed.
I hate Crap Science. Some fools read this crap science and believe it.
The energy required to accelerate just a few grams to these velocities is beyond our ability. We are talking megatons of energy over a few seconds. That is one hell of laser and I do not want to be 1000 miles from it when they pull the trigger. The sail would need to 100 percent reflective as just a minuscule percentage of the energy not reflected would instantaneously render it plasma and perhaps atomic particles.
I hate Crap Science being published as science. Those that do are not persons of science.
Excellent point FreeperCell!
Huston we have a problem. We forgot the breaks. Lol
Moties ?
Idiocracy.
Augh! You are, of course, correct. That's only 2,200,000 mph. Don Garlits vs. Shirley Muldowney at the NHRA finals...
Dooda? Monback.
That much speed differential over a period of 120 seconds requires an average acceleration of about 51,000 G. It is possible for specially constructed electronics to survive G forces in that region.
That speed would make the flyby portion come and go in seconds. There would be measurable relativistic time dilation, but it would not be a deal-breaker.
The solution is warping space time where a line becomes a point. All that needs doing is the implementation.
Schmoobleedong.
You won’t understand it though.
“Good shot kid! Don’t get cocky!”
The thing that slams into that pebble is going to have the bad day.
I wish I was 40 years younger. the incredible thing coming in the future. imagine being alive when the first video from a space craft traveling to another star system is received on planet earth. imagine a tourist trip to the moon. unfortunately I am sure I wont be around for any of this but the little boy in me wants to be there.
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