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Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100 Million Interstellar Spacecraft Plan

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

turgid writes:

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: 1) by anubi on Wednesday April 13 2016, @08:19AM

    by anubi (2828) on Wednesday April 13 2016, @08:19AM (#331051) Journal

    Thanks! I did not know that phenomena had a name, but I knew it existed.

    I extrapolated from how much wavering I observe from about ten miles of atmosphere after the light traveled light-years to get to me, and considered - at the angles I observe - what the mistargeting of the laser would be if I were trying to hit a target thousands of miles away with the laser on Earth... it seems to me ( gut feeling ) - that it would be damned near impossible to hold the laser onto the target - after its random perturbations by our atmosphere.

    I wonder how to sense the phenomena in realtime for correction? Maybe use a nearby star and correct for what the atmospherics did to its light?

    It seems like trying to use a laser ten feet underwater to hit something a mile up in the air... but you can't do anything about all the waves.

    Interesting point you bring up about the interaction of that much laser light with atmosphere. I have no feeling about this one yet, but if anyone here has worked with high power lasers on the ground, have you noticed anything smelly ( like ozone ) that gets released when that much energy is traveling through the atmosphere as light? I do know high voltage will stress the air so much I get ozone and various nitrogen compounds ( even the diesel engine in my van stresses the air enough to form various oxides of nitrogen ) .

    --
    "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]