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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   
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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Original Submission

• Re:30 years is a generation now? (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @02:42PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 13 2016, @02:42PM (#331170)

  Your grasp of what's happening is tenuous at best. As the other comments pointed out, gold diggers and career-minded women are two very different animals. Not every person who can give birth must do so for the species to continue. The planet is overpopulated as it is.

  There is nothing to fear from a human being who happens to be cisfemale. However, one should be aware that sooner or later they will invoke their cisfemale privilege and attempt to take advantage of you. Avoid causes such as breast cancer awareness, even if one has that part of female anatomy oneself. Sooner or later, somebody will emerge who is a cisgendered hunny. Should one fall out of favor with the cisgendered hunny, no matter how blatantly obvious it is that circumstances were not of one's making, even if the circumstances are ultimately the making of cisgendered hunnies, one will face the accusation that one is trying to control their bodies. They will block one's access to necessary medical services, especially their coveted hormones and breast care services such as mammograms. Every person who is 40 and over who is not cisfemale who is able to access regular screening mammograms is a direct threat and invasion to them.

  At best, one may have occasional business contact with a cisfemale. It is impossible to tell which are human beings and which are cisgendered hunnies until it is too late.

  As far as gold diggers, they exist. They raise their daughters will full knowledge of what their cisfemale privilege entitles them to, and the mothers encourage the daughters to breed early and breed often with as many different deluded sperm donors as possible. Sometimes they even brazenly attempt to scam men into being the sperm donor with a one night stand and merely a verbal promise that he will not need to worry about the child. This is, of course, a lie. I know men who the cisgendered hunnies have attempted to con this way.

  I do not think you will have to worry about cisgendered hunnies walking away from their cisfemale privileges.

  Parent