[ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars!

[Adrian Tymes]

On Apr 15, 2016 2:43 PM, "Stephen Van Sickle" <sjv2006 at gmail.com> wrote:
> Why would they have "nothing to do?"  The major cost is in engineering
and the capital cost of the laser array.  Keep sending probes.

They plan to just send a few probes - possibly making a chain of relays,
accelerated to different speeds - precisely so they don't have 20 years of
work to do.

> Use the laser array for other uses such as a telescope array, or much
slower (and massive) local spacecraft, or super lidar for astronomical uses.
>
> Now there is a thought.  Why bother with a payload?  What could you see
with a 100 GW laser array and the telescope array that goes with it, using
it as lidar?  The "probe" would be 5 times faster.  And you can gather data
for far longer than 2 hours.

But that's not Putting Some Physical Object There (At Least Briefly), which
seems to be the real mission specification, with what you can actually do
with it an afterthought.
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