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 ...
It isn’t so much the electronics - well, yes, that too - but the fact that they’re talking about hanging this thing off a sail that leads me to wonder what is going to be able to withstand that. Well, in any case the article is specific about the projecting requiring major advances in technology. I’m guessing this is one.
Technically, a spacecraft can only use half its fuel-vs-momentum to accelerate, and the other half to decelerate, unless an aerobraking maneuver is available. At a significant percentage of the speed of light, however, this is impossible. Even 1% speed would fry you faster than a moth in a flame. I personally think our own solar system holds enough room for us to explore for the next million years if we survive that long.
We will be exceeding the speed of space not speed of light.
We've been in a dark age of physics for a long time now, but you wouldn't know it because mainstream academia filters out all dissent and breakthrough discoveries that upset the prevailing paradigm.
Deep Academia is no different than the Deep State. There's a whole unseen rebellion of deplorable physicists and cosmologists out there today.
Search on 'electric universe' to learn more.
I would sooner search on ‘flat earth’ than ‘electric universe’. If you’d like me to debunk any of those theories, I’d be happy to. Just provide any fact related to it.
Eminent scientists all agree, that the world is flat, and heavier than air flight is impossible.
End of debate.
The article does not propose what you describe. RTFA. Humans are not going.
The article proposes accelerating a bunch of tiny probes to 0.2c via earth-based lasers. There is no plan for decelerating. Instead, the surviving probes will radio back what they see as they fly by their target at 0.2c, giving earthlings a close glimpse of nearby solar systems.
Probably should debug the probes using Mars fly-bys. Experiment is over in hours vs decades (experimental probe goes on to reach Pluto's orbit in a day or so).
Just to be clear, I am a space geek. No one wants to get into space more than me. Because I’ve taken a serious hard cold look at the problem, I know that our solar system is likely all that we will ever be able to explore
and just why would some alien come to this out of the way, backwater solar system on the edge of our galaxy and visit earth whose atmosphere could be hostile to them?
“if there were other sentient beings in the galaxy (there aren’t)” Having surveyed our galaxy and all 500 billon (at current count) galaxies, you arrive at the conclusion that none of the trillions on trillions of planets have intelligent life; just amazing!
Alternately, we are the Elder Race. Or the Great Filter is REALLY rough to pass. . .
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 having the broadcast interrupted at the start by an announcement that the planet earth and its indigenous population is quarantined indefinitely ... for their own good.
or, alternately, that the war fleet has just arrived at the outer edge of the solar system and will commence operations when it reaches the orbit of Saturn ...
Let me explain. If we are to explore it will be with AI that will be automated, self replicating, multi duplicating, machines. If that has any possibility of working, and if there is any other life in the universe, it would already have been done and it would have hit every single star within our galaxy by now.
“the spacecraft will be traveling at one-fifth the speed of light”.
Stopping may become an issue.
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I don’t think that “stopping” would be part of the mission. It would be, in large measure, a “flyby” mission...a very high speed fly-by. I guess it would be possible to partially decelerate by using the craft’s “light sail” as a parachute resisted by the star’s radiation & solar wind.
I hate when the brakes stop working when to are traveling 50,000 miles a second. You miss the exit ramps.
The speed referred to here would be fast enough to go from earth to the moon in 6.7 seconds.
Yeah. Sure. Hyperdrive. Warp speed. It’s OK to dream; but it isn’t OK to posit your dream as science.
Where is my flying car?
Total nonsense. Reaching 1/5 the speed of light in two minutes implies G forces far greater than any human can take and not become a mass of jelly.
There is no way around this fact.
The headline says “travel.” Words have meanings. That means that a human goes in the spaceship. It is unfair to imply that in the headline, and then deny it in the article.
I think Elon Musk is already on another planet.
...
He would probably laugh and consider that a compliment.
Yesterday, SpaceX received another contract to launch an Air Force satellite. They are saving taxpayers at least $100 million.
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