Posted on 04/12/2016 10:30:45 AM PDT by MarchonDC09122009
In an attempt to leapfrog the planets and vault into the interstellar age, a bevy of scientists and other luminaries from Silicon Valley and beyond, led by Yuri Milner, the Russian philanthropist and Internet entrepreneur, announced a plan on Tuesday to send a fleet of robots no bigger than iPhones to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system, 4.37 light-years away.
If it all worked out — a cosmically big “if” that would occur decades and perhaps $10 billion from now — a rocket would deliver a “mother ship” carrying a thousand or so small probes to space. Once in orbit, the probes would unfold thin sails and then, propelled by powerful laser beams from Earth, set off one by one like a flock of migrating butterflies across the universe.
(Excerpt) Read more at mobile.nytimes.com ...
Ya got to round up a passle of millenials to text or whatever it is they do on those phones as well.
Gotta start somewhere.
“Cobra Commander did something similar in the 80s cartoon.”
Chairface Chippendale did it on “The Tick”. Zuckerburg is a better super-villain that either of those guys.
Kinda like the little butterflies who flit around FR who are Cruz supporters.
Not only that, but the signal has to be directed at a tiny target like Earth, and at such great distance even a miniscule fraction of a degree off misses completely.
20 years? A single light year is 6 trillion miles.
But thats about as good as we can get.
How fast can we make things go? and what if we run into a speck of dust at that speed.
4 lightyears away only takes 4 years if you are going light speed. Very steep curve on the ‘time’ axis.
Haven’t read the article yet, but I didn’t detect any mention of stopping or slowing down when they get there. I hope the little drones have high speed imaging systems as they whisk by.
Also curious where they’re going to put the big laser. If on Earth, it’s going to be awfully hard to keep it pointed at Alpha Centauri as the Earth rotates once a day and orbits the sun. Seems it would need to be out in space somewhere relatively stable, and then where do you plug it in?
Yet more proof FReepers are out of this world!
RE: amusing comments, image posts and insightful technical consideration questions.
I’m inspired - next stop for me: donate to our Freepathon.
Thanks everyone
You can probably build the laser at an Earth L5 point. From there it should be easy to keep it pointed correctly, and it would be far enough away to power it with a fairly hefty reactor, without requiring all kinds of shielding. Alternately, by going a bit farther out, it could be stationed at the appropriate pole of a large asteroid, which might make it easier to build, since it could use the asteroid as the “framework”. Such a location could also provide the benefit of a little gravity, making maintenance a bit easier.
I'd be really impressed if we actually made something go that fast. Look at the last 35 years of space travel advancement compared to computer tech. Space tech is at a stand still.
How fast can we make things go? and what if we run into a speck of dust at that speed.
A speck at that speed would be really noisy, in the vacuum of space that is.
“You can probably build the laser at an Earth L5 point.”
And I promise you can trust me with it.
-Emperor Conejo the 1st
Didn’t the Robinson’s already go there?
I was stationed at White Sands for a while 30 odd years ago. They were doing laser acceleration/launching of frisbee sized ‘flying saucers’ that had very little mass.
No less than 4 huge and serius diesel generators producing power just for the laser and they could only fire it for a few seconds. If you thought the generators were loud it was insane when the laser fired. Very primitive in the tech but amazing.
It’s a flyby mission, but a string of probes, say a day apart will provide near continuous coverage.
There are many stars and planets 20 or less LY away.
Big thing is are there any green zone planets and what life is on them.
I came up with an idea about 30 years ago when I was an aerospace engineer.
Using asteroid resources we can build a mass driver, which is a linear magnetic accelerator, in gravity gradient mode around the Sun. The mass driver could be up to several thousand kilometers long. In space there is no real limit on the size of such as structure.
Using solar power, we can accelerate nano-probes (5 kg or so) to about .1 C
Such a mass driver could launch millions of probes in every direction over a period of decades.
To return a signal to Earth, I proposed a very slow rate of laser pulses that would be picked up by dedicated telescopes.
I like this better than laser propulsion. We already proved in rail gun programs that we can build sophisticated nano-craft that take over 100,000 Gs of acceleration.
So, when we got our rail gun up to 100,000 Gs, what do you think we launched first? A Timex watch! It was still ticking when we pried it out of the backstop.
I can appreciate the innovative space probe idea.
However, some SETI scientists recommend we stay quiet and avoid broadcasting that there’s “intelligent” life on earth.
Scientists Offer Plan To Hide Earth From Advanced Space Aliens
www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/scientists-offer-plan-to...
Apr 2, 2016 ... Such concerns have roiled the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) community in recent years. Some scientists say that, in addition to ...
RE: “I came up with an idea about 30 years ago when I was an aerospace engineer.
Using asteroid resources we can build a mass driver, which is a linear magnetic accelerator, in gravity gradient mode around the Sun. The mass driver could be up to several thousand kilometers long. In space there is no real limit on the size of such as structure.
Using solar power, we can accelerate nano-probes (5 kg or so) to about .1 C
Such a mass driver could launch millions of probes in every direction over a period of decades.
To return a signal to Earth, I proposed a very slow rate of laser pulses that would be picked up by dedicated telescopes.
I like this better than laser propulsion. We already proved in rail gun programs that we can build sophisticated nano-craft that take over 100,000 Gs of acceleration.
So, when we got our rail gun up to 100,000 Gs, what do you think we launched first? A Timex watch! It was still ticking when we pried it out of the backstop.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.