[GeronL]

Or we could slap hundreds of them on a large ship.

[ClearCase_guy]

I’m picturing Mr. Scott inhaling helium and screeching a tiny “Th’engines can’ take much more, Sir!”

[Lazamataz]

Thanks to research on nano-sized thrusters that act like portable particle accelerators, tiny spacecraft might be accelerated to near-lightspeed and sent to explore nearby stars

....carrying eetsy-beetsy tiny little astronauts.

[NMEwithin]

That’s all well in good...until The Borg assimilate them...and then what????

[mysterio]

[webheart]

More NanoBS. What would be the purpose of sending a spacecraft the size of a sewing needle to another star? The only people who would be fascinated by such a concept work for MSN and MSNBC. for one, it would be too small to track, once it got ten feet from the launch pad. The next concern would be what sort of instrumentation and communication equipment it could carry. So, theoretically, you could make a really small but fast-moving projectile, but to claim it would be useful for space exploration is snake oil.

People have been talking about nano robotics for years. They contemplate molecular-sized mechanisms that could do all sorts of tiny work, but they have yet to show even the first prototype. The thing about nanotechnologies is that they can tell you that it’s right there, building tiny nanobuildings, and you couldn’t see a damn thing. That’s because nanostuff is too small to see. So we can pay millions in grants to research something that can’t even be seen or touched.

[ml/nj]

I wonder if these guys know about the conservation of momentum! In order to accelerate a mass in space, you have to expel mass. Nano stuff isn't going to do it.

ML/NJ

[Hegemony Cricket]

Well that’ll be just great. It will prolly poke some sleeping alien when it gets there and he will come back here to open up a large-size can of whoop-@$$ on us...

[SunkenCiv]

I still think I’ve got a mosquito problem, rather than a nano-lightspeck.

[KevinDavis]

[Captain Beyond]

bump

[Brett66]

Ok, a spaceship with a very small mass could be accelerated to a very high velocity, but the energy required to do that would be enormous and it wouldn’t be small.

Maybe if they used a space-based particle accelerator in orbit to shoot the thing to near-light velocity.........