I am all for research into this but what a giant lol are you kidding me moment at first sight as presented.

Just gossip news for consumption, with what technology before other more important projects in this system ?

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wir...craft-38336542


" With famed physicist Stephen Hawking at his side, an Internet investor announced Tuesday that he's spending $100 million on a futuristic plan to explore far outside our solar system.

Yuri Milner said the eventual goal is sending hundreds or thousands of tiny spacecraft, each weighing far less than an ounce, to the Alpha Centauri star system. That's more than 2,000 times as far as any spacecraft has gone so far.

Propelled by energy from a powerful array of Earth-based lasers, the spacecraft would fly at about one-fifth the speed of light. They could reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years, where they could make observations and send the results back to Earth.

They might discover a planet or planets there — experts think there may be some, but there's no proven sighting yet — and possibly even find signs of life there or elsewhere, said Milner and a panel of experts at the announcement. The three stars that make up Alpha Centauri are the closest stars to our star — the sun.

"We commit to the next great leap into the cosmos," Hawking said, "because we are human and our nature is to fly."

Hawking has joined Milner and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg on the board of the project, called Breakthrough Starshot, which includes a team of scientists. Milner said his $100 million will go to establish the feasibility of the project, and that a launch itself would require far more money.

Hawking is also part of a project Milner announced last summer to use earthbound telescopes to seek intelligent life in outer space.

For the Starshot project, the tiny spacecraft would be boosted into space by a conventional rocket, and then set free individually. They would capture the energy from the earthbound laser array with sails a few yards wide. Milner said recent advances in electronic miniaturization, laser technology and fabrication of extremely thin and light materials have made such a mission realistic to consider.

"We can do more than gaze at the stars," Milner said. "We can actually reach them.""


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Initiative/3

http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3


I want to know how will this thing of only a few grams find the power to send from 4.5 light years away a message of some bandwidth back to earth with the information it is recording there even if it did manage to move at 0.2c for the trip to last 20 years. (like how will it aim at such needed accuracy and with what computing power to do all this task and orient itself accurately, even a laser beam from that far so that the information can be captured somehow here - how will it collected here also with what spread of the beam since i cant imagine such angular accuracy to aim directly on target from that far unless i am missing a massive breakthrough in place for such tasks)

1-10 grams by the way is not even a very smart device today or any time soon. If we talked 100 grams for something significant surely.

If these guys were talking a bit more reasonable numbers then maybe. How about exploring our system at even 0.001c for all i care (then 0.01c). This is how you bloody start such things. Because even at 0.001c an object that is 0.1 kgr (kinetic energy 5.5*10^9 J) it would be 20 times faster than the faster missions ever on the way out (say 300 km/sec vs 10-15 km/sec) and take only 1 year to reach the outer solar system and prove the concept while learning something about the edges of this system at the same time and still having a chance to actually transmit data back to this planet within the ridiculous 0.1 kgr mass restriction.

I especially want to know what lasers are they going to be using and from where and with what power supplied to them and what will be the size of the sail when deployed.

How about cutting the bs and actually starting a solar system project first to prove the technology is remotely doable (especially the propulsion and communication back part from something so small).

Nevertheless here is some additional work for thought because eventually a lot of it is indeed doable and a good motivator for miniaturization technology development for sure.


http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-con...light-15-h.pdf


So my criticism is in how they market it lol instead of taking a more gradual build up timeline of more sensible projects first until the final one is doable. Which by the way is obviously not even 10 years close as realization and due to the nature of the trip (20 years+) it will also suffer from the we can always start later and go faster with better technology if we wait another 2 years type of problem.

Lets use this thread though to showcase various technologies that may be needed for this and what is already available. (look under the link "challenges" for more information on what is available or might become available that may surprise to a degree and justify this thread)

The lasers should not be earth based. They need to be moon based (no atmosphere to interfere). Once Zeno's Bar, Brothel, and Poker emporium is constructed on the moon, I will lease at a nominal fee the needed space to operate and maintain the laser facility and other infrastructure required to run this part of the program.

Where is John von Neumann when we need him the most.

I think they should go for it. masque, you mentioned enhanced technlolgy may lead to that we will get better and cheaper probes passing the original ones as the project goes on! Let's see all of this as a pilot study. Put some grams going. Things will be tested and developed as it proceeds. Keep the goal interstellar, will raise money. Who would pay zillions for reaching the Kuiper belt today? Few. How many are interested in actually reaching the nearby star, even if only semi-sputnik-wise? Great many.
Realistically though, simulation possibilities are probably that good it will not be feasible to send probes that will likely be passed by later ones. You need to get the technology good enough, getting the speed the devices reach high enough, for them probably not getting passed. First out must be first "in", or it will all look stupid. Until then you'll have to make the trip on a virtual basis, again and again. If you find out something interesting enough to register during the trip everything changes a bit. But what would that be? A lot of empty space.

Granted I know little about giant laser maintence but would it be a good guess that expense goes way up if we have to launch rockets every time the oil needs to be changed?

Maybe space elevators can fit in this plan.

We cant send anything anywhere out of this system if we dont first test it works here.

The distance to the closest star is 290000 au basically. If we miss the orbit by 1 part in 100000 the probe will pass by a system and see nothing but what telescopes can "see" by then lol. First of all there is nothing we have that can record quality material with its own AI with a couple grams of hardware. Seriously now. It will first happen here before elsewhere. I have no doubt that it will happen though if physics allows it and technology is not entirely out of reach for that physics and the limits it places.

For example developing flyby missions of 0.1 kgr per spaceship (100 grams is vastly different than 2) that travel at 0.001c will make it possible to observe anything we like in the solar system in real time at many points of it as if we had probes everywhere at various points all moving out (like weather probes kind of thing). So we can do a lot here before we go out and test the technology to correct it. We will of course go out if we succeed here. That is the goal.

Sending a message using a few grams of emitter equipment in laser targeting earth from such distance may require some ridiculous focusing of like 1 part in a tril or higher (basically the entire cross section surface of the earth from that distance represents only 6*10^-21 of the sky. But we dont have the entire earth receiving photons at all times waiting in each place of the planet to see the message and obviously this area receives all kinds of photons as well from other sources from the near same direction.

Even if we could focus with accuracy df*dtheta or order 10^-9 per angle we go to 10^-18 and are still far from needed. Can you see how ridiculous even a perturbation of the entire system's position due to nearby stars influencing the orbit ever so slightly can alter the ability to send back anything? I want to understand better how we can detect something from that far without the emitter being some serious equipment with substantial artificial intelligence and multiple probes needed to understand its position and emit properly and aim as needed correcting things all the time for all kinds of crazy perturbations. You cant see earth from that distance. You see only the sun basically with such primitive equipment so it needs some dramatically advanced and compact way to navigate and understand where to send its beam all while moving at 0.2 c +-unknown by then fluctuations of the true speed lol.

It's kind of ridiculous to imagine we can focus a laser for millions of km (during acceleration phase inside a dirty solar system with chaotic solar wind and solar activity etc) in such accuracy that we wont fail the orbit in 1 part in 100000 over such distances (which is not important for missions inside this system though that however still require self correction while on target getting there) and account perfectly for all phenomena that can impact the orbit at the 1 in 100000 level and there are many (including unknown ones).

A system that is not shielded is very vulnerable to space dust and can be destroyed immediately with a small grain hitting it at such speeds unlike the case with a true spaceship.


I do not like to argue the other side of progress. But at the same time i like to aim at progress the right way not with bs media fiestas. The media hears interstellar and goes bananas as if any of this is anywhere near possible.

Setting realistic goals is the sure way to get to the very ambitious ones eventually faster than general distant plans that may force some depression fast when they prove so impossible.

We havent even accelerated anything beyond 0.0005 c i think, let alone 0.2 c lol (at gram scale). We will do all these things first in this system.

Yeah, this type of supposed dream technology needs tested within the range of our own star system. A better effort should be made to have space-based platforms in orbit around Earth, in addition to bases on the moon, Ceres, Mars, one of the moons of Saturn etc as a progressive outreach of human endeavor and habitation. Much more doable and wise use of money and focus. This may take 50 years or more depending on a lot of unknowns and factors.

The solar system itself is dirty compared to the void of interstellar space, which is as empty as a politician's cranium. Perhaps one day Masque's son or daughter will be on Pluto and will help launch out miniature probes toward Alpha Centauri.

Plus you have to aim where the earth will be by the time the signal gets there (which requires to know the exact distance to the system gl with that) and of course this is the entire earth orbit around the sun lol and the entire solar system's uncertainty of influences from other stars of the galaxy on both ends over the next 4-5 years or something. I mean even if one had an error in the velocity of the solar system by 0.1m/sec (sun rotates around the galaxy at about 200 km/sec but obviously this has to fluctuate a bit), in 4.5 years this has become larger than the diameter of earth.

Just imagine all this crap before any of this was said by them and see what needs to be solved and you quickly get frustrated lol. But of course its the aim of genius to find ways around such obstacles. But with a few grams now? Maybe in 50-100 years with the technology by then sure. We can aim to solve problems in this system and then we can go.

In fact the (or a) way we will "get" "easily" to another stellar/planetary system virtually anywhere in time is with life 2.0 paradigm nanotechnology seeding of our entire coded civilization and DNA sequences etc (in a machine no larger than a few kgr eventually) exactly like how an entire forest happens from a single initial pine cone seed a century later (only much faster and more complicated now with life 2.0 able to grow in almost any kind of environment using whatever resources it finds to metabolize and grow according to coded master plan there, building from the environment and its coded "DNA" 2.0 an entire technological city out of planetary material, its atmosphere and its sun.

So the generalization of plant life in action. After it has altered the local environment to more friendly terms it will bring to "life" true actual life 1.0 including us and our collected civilization in gradual steps until a true human is born and raised by AI there exactly as a newborn child is raised here. All this knowledge to do all this can easily fit in a few kgr of equipment because the information stored in it is enough to do this as recipe basically (think what does a forest and its resulting collective dynamical environment need but only the information contained in a few seeds). Each step enables further steps until some AI can take over and do things even faster and more efficiently at will, building from this artificial world that came out of the seeds and the initially hostile or not very friendly environment of that planet.

I mean life is nothing particularly more advanced than this, in fact by then proving much more inferior in design and degrees of freedom available to higher complexity.

I give you the future...lol

If we do not go there with ark generation ships directly, we will recreate everything there with intelligent seeds of only a few kgr each worth of supporting technology. Obviously any advanced enough civilization can do at least that. At the very least you can seed a solar system in 4-5 places of interest and by the time (100 years later) your ark ship traveling at only 0.05c gets there (powered by fusion and ion propulsion its doable) the more friendly world is waiting for you. The first step got there faster because it had much less mass requirements so it could be a ship no larger than 10 tons say delivering a payload of a few kgr in each planet of interest.

I think SMP should get a nice chunk of that $100 million for doing our part in the feasibility study. It sounds perfectly feasible to me. Please send my $1 million check to PairTheBoard c/0 2+2.




PairTheBoard

masque, you have a point. What's the use of sending out some **** if you can't even track it?

We already know the Voyagers are going interstellar, so effectively we've already done the primary part, sending stuff out our system, nothing entirely new here.

Let the tech catch up and let's return to this in 30-50 years. Nice to do the prodromal analyses now though. Let them throw some money on it. They have that much they will not get depressed when not succeeding. They know they will be immortal the day we reach the Centaury system. Facebooking Alpha.