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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday April 13 2016, @02:48AM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-a-tiny-spaceship dept.

The BBC and the Guardian both carry stories about an unmanned interstellar spacecraft designed to reach the Alpha Centauri system "within a generation" (30 or so years).

The spacecraft would be miniaturised to the size of an average silicon chip, and be propelled by a solar sail which would receive a boost from a powerful laser on the Earth.

Milner's Breakthrough Foundation is running a project, backed by Hawking, to research the technologies needed for such a mission, which they think will soon be feasible.

takyon: The campaign is called Breakthrough Starshot. Breakthrough Initiatives also announced the release of initial observational datasets from the Breakthrough Listen 10-year SETI effort.


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  • (Score: 2) by el_oscuro on Wednesday April 13 2016, @04:03AM

    by el_oscuro (1711) on Wednesday April 13 2016, @04:03AM (#330972)

    Ok, so we successfully get it up to 20%C and it zips out of our solar system in a few hours
    If we can pull that off, without anything else, that is a huge discovery. If the probe can send back any telemetry at all, imagine how much we could learn.

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  • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Wednesday April 13 2016, @05:03AM

    by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday April 13 2016, @05:03AM (#330994) Journal

    If we can pull that off, without anything else, that is a huge discovery. If the probe can send back any telemetry at all, imagine how much we could learn.

    The single solution I can see: chips created with Josephson junctions [wikipedia.org].
    To put it mildly, not very common in the current technology, I doubt anyone tried the Moore law on them.

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