[ExI] Breakthrough Starshot - To The Stars!

Adrian Tymes atymes at gmail.com
Sun Apr 24 00:29:25 UTC 2016


On Sat, Apr 23, 2016 at 4:54 PM, Rafal Smigrodzki <
rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> Mirrors can be made uniform to a very very small level of variation. The
> intensity fluctuations within a large laser beam fired with adaptive optics
> are small. Nano-actuators on the spacecraft could adjust reflectance of
> parts of the mirror in microseconds to correct fluctuations.
> Graphene-reinforced monocrystalline aluminum, or whatever they end up using
> on the mirror, is tough stuff even at monolayer thicknesses.
>

Apparently that is not how the numbers work out.  Common sense scales
sometimes do not apply when we are already talking about extremes well
outside the realm that common sense was formed within.
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