[ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars!

Stephen Van Sickle sjv2006 at gmail.com
Fri Apr 15 01:51:59 UTC 2016


They have a good page on the challenges involved.

http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3


On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 1:30 PM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Apr 14, 2016 12:41 PM, "Rafal Smigrodzki" <rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Why would they need the beam on for 20 years? The proposal calls for a
> boost phase lasting only a few hours, after launching a sufficient number
> of probes the facility can be dismantled.
>
> How do they plan to decelerate?  (If they will detach something to stay,
> that will need deceleration.)
>
> And if they don't, what meaningful interaction can be accomplished over
> there?  Even just measurement and observation would be better done by
> something that sticks around (see how much data a certain Mars rover has
> generated).  We've seen how sustainable "flags and footprints" is: some
> decades later, we can't even rebuild the rockets that took people to the
> Moon.
>
> Further, accelerating to even just 0.1 c (about 3 * 10^7 m/s) over a few
> hours (call it 10,000 seconds, roughly 3 hours) comes to about 300 Gs.  And
> they're just launching nanocraft.  I do not think they will be able to come
> up with a design that would not shatter, breaking the reflector so they
> don't even wind up accelerating dust, let alone functioning spacecraft, to
> nearly the speed desired.  Granted, 90 hours - just shy of 4 days
> continuous - would drop this to around 10 Gs, which may be feasible
> depending on spacecraft design.
>
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