[ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars!

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 12:55 AM, Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Apr 14, 2016 at 6:51 PM, Stephen Van Sickle <sjv2006 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> They have a good page on the challenges involved.
>>
>> http://breakthroughinitiatives.org/Challenges/3
>>
>> Read it.  It answers some of my objections but not all.  Most notably,
> how do they keep the project running for the 20 years they estimate (plus
> time for the signal to get back), such that someone will be listening (and
> know how to listen) when the signal from the fly-by returns?  (And then
> there's still, "it's a fly-by; this isn't sustainable, it'll be more thrown
> away effort for no development gain.")
>

### Being able to build a starship capable of reaching a star in
non-geological timeframes is already a significant development gain. Sure,
to build a colonizing starship you would need to scale up enough to
construct a decelerating laser at destination, and you would need enough of
autonomous AI and nanotech production capacity to seed a technological
civilization but, as they say, the journey of a thousand miles starts with
one step.

Rafał
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