NASA Begins Planning For An Interstellar Mission In 2069 (nypost.com)

Long-time Slashdot reader cold fjord writes: During the 2017 Geophysical Union Conference, scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory revealed that they are planning an interstellar exploration mission for the year 2069. The goal is to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, some 4.3 light years away. NASA is working on technology to allow a spacecraft to reach 10% of the speed of light, which might allow them to reach Alpha Centauri in as soon as 44 years.

A number of technologies are being explored, although there are many practical hurdles. The New Scientist adds that the 2016 NASA budget directed NASA to study interstellar travel that could reach 10% of the speed of light by 2069.

Comments

Happy Birthday Jeezus

[Anonymous Coward]

And Murray Christmas to ALL

Re: Happy Birthday Jeezus

[Anonymous Coward]

And a Griswald Christmas to you.

From Santa, Jesusâ(TM) best friend.

That's a PR stunt, not planning

[Baron_Yam]

We don't have the required tech nor engineering skill to get a useful probe to our nearest neighbouring star in a human lifetime.

We might as well say we're planning to launch a human expedition on an Orion drive-powered O'Neill cylinder generation ship; it'd be more inspiring.

Re:That's a PR stunt, not planning

[thinkwaitfast]

Fifty years is a long time. And with an ion engine, we would only need ~10^35000 kg of propellant!

Re:That's a PR stunt, not planning

[Anonymous Coward]

But our computers got better, therefore everything gets better at the same rate. This has been promised to us by sci-fi writers and 1960s TV shows based on "Wagon trains to the stars".

I stopped believing in Santa Claus but as an adult believing in warp drive and space fantasies is socially acceptable.

Re:That's a PR stunt, not planning

[Anonymous Coward]

2069, dude. Not now, not even next year.
Vulcans will arrive in 2063.

Re: That's a PR stunt, not planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. We just need to get their attention.

Re:That's a PR stunt, not planning

[Anonymous Coward]

Totally argree! My first thought was "Has NASA lose that fucking mind!" Second, was that damn Okie approved for NASA administrator? This not the NASA full of "steely missile men" that I know of ole. This is even Dr. Sally Ride's NASA and that's so sad. She was a Ph.D in physics and would know this is pure bullshit!

Re:That's a PR stunt, not planning

[careysub]

A PR start for somebody, perhaps, but not NASA. According to the New Scientist article the 2016 funding bill required them to perform such a study - even writing the performance and launch date into the legislation (because that works so well with other projects, right?)

So NASA produced the required study.

It was required by law to describe a 10% c mission to be launched in 2069.

Your dollars at work, as directed by legislators.

Re:That's a PR stunt, not planning

[RockDoctor]

to get a useful probe to our nearest neighbouring star in a human lifetime.

Doing (whatever they're planning) within a human lifetime wasn't part of the design specification.

If you have a mentality that cannot conceive of starting a project that neither you nor any children you choose to have (and can afford to be-sprog) will live to see the end of, and that, then clearly you are a person who is severely lacking in ambition. People like you will never be the progenitors (genetically, or psychologically) of the first human-derivative to see the Milky Way from the outside.

a human expedition on an Orion drive-powered O'Neill cylinder generation ship; it'd be more inspiring.

It also happens to fall into the range of events that are (1) not impossible, and (2) broadly within the range of technologies which we have reasonable control over. It's doable.

But I don't think that you're the person to lead the project. With some effort, you might be worthy to clean up the dead coffee cups. When they're using paper, not ceramic.

Re:That's a PR stunt, not planning

[Baron_Yam]

It obviously never occurred to you that I MIGHT have put that condition in because it's tough enough to get funding for a project that takes more than a single political administration, and downright impossible to get taxpayers to fund something they won't live to see a return on.

You lack the experience, wisdom and intelligence.

And you're a complete asshole, too.

Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Such a goal practically requires mastering nuclear fusion by that point in time. Now it's possible that I'm too much of a pessimist but I always placed practical fusion drive about two centuries from now. At least judging from recent spacecraft propulsion developments, it doesn't seem plausible that after the past fifty years of "progress", we'll jump straight to an interstellar drive in another fifty years.

Re: Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is likely just a fantasy, a ploy to secure more funding for the decades to come.

Iâ(TM)d be far more pleased to see morw investment going into exploitation and reaearch of the Moon, Mars and asteroida in out solar system. Truly conquering the moon is the first step in serious space exploration. If we canâ(TM)t put a permanent base there, we can forget about colonizing mars or launching interstellar probes.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Baron_Yam]

Fusion drives are actually quite a reasonable technological development to anticipate in the (relatively) near future. It's over-unity fusion we can't manage to crack. I also suspect we never will, and that only gravity can do it on a practical basis, but that's just an ignorant layman guess.

As long as you're not worried about a net energy gain, and you just want what is basically a particle beam created by a poorly confined fusion reaction, a fusion drive appears doable and the math says it'll give you about twice the velocity of a nuclear pulse drive.

After that... it's pipe dreams about micro probes riding massive solar sails and somehow managing to carry useful instrumentation and a strong communication laser.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

But where do you get the energy to initiate the fusion in the first place? It's a similar issue as with open- vs. closed-cycle chemical engines. The energy to pump the propellant has to come from somewhere. Likewise, any practical interstellar fusion drive will necessarily have to have significant net electricity output to power itself. Otherwise it's just a slight boost to your initial energy source and you need yet another power source with nuclear-level of energy density, and we don't seem to know about any other. At best, you could make the argument that if, say, your fusion-products-to-electricity conversion is 10% efficient, then it might make still sense to use it as a thrust booster if you're only generating 4x your input, but there doesn't seem to be a significant jump from generating more energy than you put in to generating more electricity than you put in, unless your energy-to-electricity conversion rate for your fusion units is extremely bad, like 1% or so.

and the math says it'll give you about twice the velocity of a nuclear pulse drive.

Doesn't thermonuclear pulse drive already beat it?

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

" I'm too much of a pessimist but I always placed practical fusion drive about two centuries from now."

No, that makes you a mindless optimist. There's only one Periodic Table of the Elements. There's no way at all to build whatever you call a fusion drive. What you see now as far as moving mass goes, is *it*. Now, or 200 years from now.

It's over, buddy. Space is a dead end, no one is going anywhere. Ever.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

There's no way at all to build whatever you call a fusion drive.

I'm not aware of any theoretic obstacle yet, and as far as practical obstacles are concerned, I'm not saying that we'll be able to remove those but one can't say that we won't, either. At least not today.

What you see now as far as moving mass goes, is *it*.

What does that even mean?

Space is a dead end, no one is going anywhere.

That's provably false; there's cars outside my window going somewhere right now.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What does that even mean?"

I thought I was pretty clear. The practical, real technologies we use now to move mass (ie, propulsion), are *it*. There are no other ways.

What does a Boeing 747 from 1969 look like? What do they look like now? How high do they fly? How fast? What do they use to move mass (ie, what are the engines based on? What theories? Materials? Fuel? I am explaining this in detail since you seem to enjoy being intentionally obtuse to avoid answering questions, typical Space Nutter tactic)

"That's provably false; there's cars outside my window going somewhere right now."

Word games don't move mass. You know exactly what I mean.

I hope you haven't made any plans to move to Mars. Because it's not going to happen. Not now. Not in 200 years. Not ever.

Enjoy your 4K monitor and SSD. The only progress we've seen since the heyday of the Space Age is smaller, cheaper transistors. This is what enables my present computer to have 64G of RAM, as opposed to the 64K of my childhood Commodore 64. In the same span of time, cars, houses, clothes, food, airplanes, boats have all remained exactly the same.

So let me explain that in case you also intend to play obtuse here.

Computers have gotten better by a factor of about a million in 30 years. A common "argument" from Space Nutters is "computers got better", as if that somehow means anything for moving mass.

ie, a hard drive, even with terabytes and petabytes, doesn't help you move a single nanogram.

Conclusion: I am here. You are here. Everyone is here. No one is going anywhere else. Ever.

Space fantasies are for adults with the minds of children, or techno-atheists who think they're rational but embrace unscientific beliefs.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another Grammar Nazi:

That's provably false; there's cars outside my window going somewhere right now.

There's cars outside? As in there is cars outside? Srsly?

There are cars outside. There're cars outside.

You're welcome.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

What does a Boeing 747 from 1969 look like?

What does a Spitfire look like? HOW do we know we're a the Jumbo Jet phase instead of the Spitfire phase anyway? We don't!

Computers have gotten better by a factor of about a million in 30 years. A common "argument" from Space Nutters is "computers got better", as if that somehow means anything for moving mass.

Fortunately I haven't made that argument, like ever, not even a single time.

Space fantasies are for adults with the minds of children, or techno-atheists who think they're rational but embrace unscientific beliefs.

Ohhh, so I need to be religious now to be rational? :-p

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Batteries, Capacitors and solar panels

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Such a thing would work in the inner solar system just fine. Basically, it would turn a 60% efficient electric rocket with an ion engine into, say, a "300%-efficient electric rocket". In fact, I've considered it in the past, but not for interstellar travel. For interstellar travel, which is the thing proposed in TFA, this wouldn't work and the fusion system would have to generate energy for its own re-ignition.

Re: Can you spell "fusion"?

[Monster_user]

Well, smaller more advanced computers add less mass to the load of a satellite, in addition to the greatly advanced computing power. This means that we are more capable of sending a space craft which can fly autonomously in a different solar system. Given the near decade a course correction from Earth would take.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Waffle Iron]

Such a goal practically requires mastering nuclear fusion by that point in time.

Not really. The current leading contender for interstellar missions is a thumbnail-sized chip attached to a nanometers-thick light sail, and propelling that using ground-based lasers. That requires a lot of new technology, but power generation isn't one of them.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[dryeo]

How do you get a signal back from a thumbnail sized chip? Even getting a signal across 4.4 light years from a full sized spaceship seems to be quite the challenge.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Waffle Iron]

Like many other aspects of this scheme, that hasn't been worked out. One possibility that's been discussed is sending a train of these tiny spacecraft that relay the messages back in daisy chain fashion.

Re: Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well, smaller more advanced computers add less mass to the load of a satellite, "

Big deal.

" in addition to the greatly advanced computing power."

Yes, we agree that the only thing different is information processing. The faster computer itself isn't what's launching the rocket in the first place.

"This means that we are more capable of sending a space craft which can fly autonomously in a different solar system."

No. See, this is the common Space Nutter fallacy and you illustrate it perfectly.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[drinkypoo]

One possibility that's been discussed is sending a train of these tiny spacecraft that relay the messages back in daisy chain fashion.

A chain, yes, but the spacecraft are all launched at the same time, at varying speeds. Or maybe even some of the closer ones are launched earlier, however the math works out. And the ones meant to stay close to home will be larger, and capable of longer-range communication. It's not just a bridge, it's a pyramid, in a way.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[thinkwaitfast]

Cyberspace is more promising anyway. No pesky c limits and such. Actual vulcans and a reset switch when the battle with the empire goes bad.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Rick Schumann]

Bussard Ramjet? It's total Science Fantasy, but if we can manage to make a fusion reactor that works, we might be able to design a ramscoop for interstellar hydrogen and a magnetic constriction to force a fusion reaction to use for propulsion.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

not the same ac.

I sincerely wish that he's not more likely to be correct, but either way you are being deliberately obtuse K. S.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

can someone explain this more? Some sort of relay system, maybe via the main probe dropping off beacons at set intervals, would seem like a good solution to the communication problem.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[drinkypoo]

If you could make the relays handle absurd G-forces, maybe you could detonate something between them in order to "drop them off" and also to provide more propulsion. But otherwise, how do you do that?

Re: Can you spell "fusion"?

[ShanghaiBill]

The plan is to use a laser boosted sail. No fusion needed.

Re: Can you spell "fusion"?

[Monster_user]

The moon is not likely to be terraform-able. There is not likely to be much of a long term benefit to putting a man on the moon, unless the experiments conducted on ISS can be conducted in low gravity, or otherwise on the moon.

Building a base on the moon would delay us for decades, if not a century or two. And a mission to mars would only be slightly less risky from the limited knowledge gained from building a moon base as practice.

The moon has less gravity, which means softer landings. The moon has no atmosphere, which means nothing to damage or erode equipment. The moon is also quite likely devoid of numerous resources for a colony to be self-sustaining. Once established, how will the colony expand?

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Am I? Again, how do you know at what phase are we at? In the 1940s, did you say "Train engines have been like this for the last fifty years, they'll always be like this"? In 1880, did you say "Taxi cabs have been like this for the last fifty years, they'll always be like this"?

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Isn't than an entirely different issue? Unless you want to convert the kinetic energy of the particles into electricity. The problem here is how (while in interstellar space) do you provide the energy for ignition which is substantial. For pulsed reaction, you need to provide it for every pulse. In continuous reaction, perhaps you need it once a while, but that's the very definition of high net energy gain anyway and probably not what Baron_Yam had in mind when he spoke of "a poorly confined fusion reaction".

Re: Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Cars are exactly the same? Have you not realized that fuel efficiency has more than doubled and safety is order of magnitude better, all while the car itself, with the equipment now standard, is substantially less expensive?

Your average econo-box has more luxury today than the Mercedes S-class of 30 years ago, for a third of the price.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Rick Schumann]

You don't seem to know what a ramscoop is or how it works which isn't surprising. A ramscoop uses magnetic fields to funnel interstellar hydrogen into a magnetic constriction point, where the pressure causes fusion to occur. The fusion reaction gives you thrust and therefore acceleration. It's a self-sustaining reaction, although you need to be at or above a certain velocity for the system to work -- so you also need stored hydrogen to get you up to speed. The magnetic fields themselves shield you from interstellar radiation (which just gets worse the faster you go). Theoretically you could reach 0.9999999999~ of C using a drive like this, acclerating forever. Some of the energy from the fusion reaction can be siphoned off to power other things. It's total Science Fiction/Fantasy though. But somehow getting your fuel source from interstellar space itself is an interesting idea.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[david_thornley]

It looks pretty dubious from the Wikipedia article. The energy required to divert the protons is going to get pretty large, and proton-proton fusion is difficult. The article suggests the carbon-nitrogen-oxygen-emit alpha-carbon cycle instead, but if you have to accelerate the protons to ship speed there's going to be a top speed.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[david_thornley]

The practical, real technologies we use now to move mass (ie, propulsion), are *it*. There are no other ways.

So far, we've looked at chemical rockets, nuclear rockets (a NERVA), throwing nukes behind the ship and smoothing the acceleration (Project Orion) , ion drives, solar sails, laser propulsion, and probably other things I have missed. So far, the practical, real technology we use to move mass to space is chemical rockets, and as you can see there's several other ways (not all suitable for launch from Earth).

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[Anonymous Coward]

A Bussard Ramjet will not work for acceleration - too much energy to collect too little hydrogen to fuse to compensate for the drag. But it makes for a fine interstellar braking device. Fuse the hydrogen in run life support and the collection and spew any excess out the front to add to the deceleration.

Re:Can you spell "fusion"?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You don't seem to know what a ramscoop is or how it works which isn't surprising.

It's not surprising, obviously, because nobody knows how it could possibly work.

A ramscoop uses magnetic fields to funnel interstellar hydrogen into a magnetic constriction point, where the pressure causes fusion to occur.

If only hydrogen were magnetic, right? And only fusion was this easy because otherwise we'd already have it. We can accelerate atoms but for some reasons fusion researchers are not inverting the process that you're proposing to ignite the fuel with. All the plans for scooping up interstellar hydrogen I've ever read only mentioned collecting it, handwaving the actual process very fervently.

Communications?

[HuskyDog]

Well one wishes them the best of luck, but it seems to me that going fast enough is only a tiny part of their problems and that getting any sort of useful communications back again is a least as big a challenge.

Consider the New Horizons mission to Pluto. The spacecraft is large and has a big high gain antenna. Also, it's power source hasn't been sitting around for 44 years. Never the less, data returns to earth at a few hundred bits per second.

Now consider Alpha Centauri. My quick calculations suggest that it is about 7000 times as far away (can someone confirm that?). Applying the inverse square law gives us a received power level - assuming the same transmit power and antennas - which is 77 dB (49000000 times) lower. Now, I am not saying that it can't be done, and I am sure that NASA have lots of very clever people, but as someone who has spend his career in radio and radar, finding an extra 77 dB is a very challenging requirement!

Re:Communications?

[HuskyDog]

Replying to my own post. A few more minutes though suggests that perhaps optical communications might work. I don't know very much about that technology, but preventing the receiving telescope from being blinded by the light from the star would clearly be a big issue to solve. Perhaps one could choose a wavelength where the star is relatively dark?

Aligning the transmitter sounds tricky, but presumably you could use the same optics to track the sun (which is presumably quite bright when viewed from Alpha Centauri).

Re:Communications?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Perhaps one could choose a wavelength where the star is relatively dark?

Are you thinking about absorption lines? That might work... But you probably need to prefer accuracy, i.e., get a tight-enough beam and aim it well enough. That should largely mitigate the transmission power issues, but might also necessitate the use of particular types of lasers with very coherent beams.

Re:Communications?

[riverat1]

Well, we're still able to communicate with the Voyager spacecraft and the signal from them is on the order of 10^-16 watts.

Re:Communications?

[eclectro]

OP, you're original post is still right with optical communication as well. Part of the problem lies within the fact that we don't know how much unseen light blocking dust is between here and there or other unfortunate large planet size non-radiating objects that we can't see. Something that lower frequency radio waves would not succumb to so easily.

My off the cuff guess is that you'd need to build a massive spaceship the size of an aircraft carrier if not more to generate the required power to transmit with the accompanying dish and electronics required. Try to get that into orbit affordably.

Re:Communications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Send a constant stream of boosters in the intermediate years, even one a day is less than 15000 of them

Re:Communications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, if it's got an interstellar velocity, we could probably swing around alpha centauri and wait another 50-100 years for it to get back and transmit the data.

Re:Communications?

[Graymalkin]

I think communications for such a mission would require a pretty significant portion of the mass budget on the craft. It would also end up being a significant portion of the mission infrastructure cost. I'd think Arecibo-like telescopes in LaGrange orbits and likely the far side of the Moon for the "ground" element and a massive reflector on the craft itself.

It might also be possible to launch a series of probes that can act as power boosting relays for each other. The first probe would have a lot of the science instruments and the follow-ons would use that space for more antenna and transceiver mass.

My pessimism kicks in unfortunately and sees this whole idea as futile since Congress doesnâ(TM)t give NASA a budget large enough for a long enough period of time to plan any sort of long term mission let alone an extremely long term one.

Re:Communications?

[Rick Schumann]

We've made some interesting discoveries concerning quantum entanglement, perhaps that could be leveraged to provide a communication? Or am I totally misunderstanding how quantum entanglement works?

Re:Communications?

[Rick Schumann]

There are bands in the EM spectrum that are relatively quiet that could be used.
However the real challenge here would be keeping an interstellar probe on course. There's no way at our current level of technology that we could predict and account for any and all gravitational forces between here and there, so you can't just send it on trajectory and expect it to get there. The probe will have to be autonomous to large degree, and capable of deciding on it's own course corrections, sighting on fixed points like pulsars, to determine it's current position and heading, Dead Reckoning or Inertial Navigation really won't work.
Then there's the question of power and propulsion. You need a power source that'll keep going for at least, say, 100 years. That'll probably end up being a reactor of some sort. Solar panels aren't going to be any use in interstellar space. For propulsion, you can't count on anything requiring reaction mass; cross your fingers that this alleged 'EM' drive we'd heard about in the past year or so isn't just a hoax of some kind or a fantasy like 'perpetual motion' machines or 'cold fusion' hoaxes we've all heard about.

So to summarize:
o If Quantum Entanglement can be leveraged into an "instantaneous" communications system, we won't have 88 year round-trip waits to talk to it
o Onboard navigation system smart enough to take care of itself and stay on course
o Robust power generation for at least 100 years' operation
o Propulsion not requiring reaction mass

That doesn't even begin to address the sciences package it'd need to make the trip worthwhile.
There's also the question of making such a probe tough enough to survive the journey and still be operational. Lots can happen, and there's lots of radiation out there.

Re:Communications?

[religionofpeas]

Or am I totally misunderstanding how quantum entanglement works?

Probably, yes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Re:Communications?

[Rick Schumann]

Damn. Without something like that, an interstellar probe is more or less pointless, given our socio-political climate at any given time. Even if they managed to get a probe launched and it gets there, in 100 years politics may have de-funded the whole thing and no one would be here to receive any signals or data sent back. :-( Hell, the way things are going right now, in 100 years there might not be a civilization here to receive it. :-(

Re:Communications?

[WolfgangVL]

Consider simple retrans outposts. Problem solved. They can double as mile markers and refueling stations.

Re:Communications?

[Anonymous Coward]

Isn't the Arecibo radio telescope able to send a radio message that a similar telescope could detect at a distance of tens of thousands of light years?

https://www.seti.org/seti-inst...

"The emission was equivalent to a 20 trillion watt omnidirectional broadcast, and would be detectable by a SETI experiment just about anywhere in the galaxy, assuming a receiving antenna similar in size to Arecibo's."

Re:Communications?

[RockDoctor]

am I totally misunderstanding how quantum entanglement works

Probably. The return leg of an entangled system would be able to pass the data back at effectively infinite speed, one bit at a time. But each of those bits would have to be created at the source as an entangled pair, then one half of each entangled pair pair would have to be physically shipped from source to destination (at a speed capped by c, and probably a lot lower), before the bit is used. The bits cannot be re-used (measurement disentangles the pair). So your average communication speed is no better than c/2.

Faster than light anything is fiction at this time, and theory only has some very contentious holes by which it could become fact. For example, maintaining quantum entanglement between two particles for more than a few minutes is currently beyond our ken.

Re:Communications?

[RockDoctor]

Go revise the "logistics" section of any of your large scale exploration expeditions of the 20th century. Going up the FuckingBig Face of FuckingBig Mountain, with cooking fuel, food and oxygen cylinders as your logistical necessities. Or crossing the FuckingBig White Plain of Antarctica, with fuel and food being the logistics constraints.

The logistic pyramid you describe is not simple. Many people have died as they have broken down. Just because it's not rocket science, doesn't mean that it's a piece of piss.

Donâ(TM)t. Be. That. Guy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet your fun at partys.

Re:Donâ(TM)t. Be. That. Guy.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It's spelled "you're" and "parties". And you have no idea.

Re: Donâ(TM)t. Be. That. Guy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Grammar nazi says sieg heil.

Re:Donâ(TM)t. Be. That. Guy.

[Anonymous Coward]

10% is too slow. Fuck you.

Re: Donâ(TM)t. Be. That. Guy.

[Type44Q]

No, we prefer to party with morons who can't even spell - it's like being in an episode of "Jackass."

Not too optimistic

[TFlan91]

I mean the tech certainly doesn't exist now.

But, with the advent of practical quantum computing, I would hope a lot of the math involved would become possible, unlocking more than just fusion.

Re:Not too optimistic

[Opportunist]

Quantum computers, just like cold fusion, are a mere 10 years away. And have been for the past 50 years or so.

Re: Not too optimistic

[Anonymous Coward]

We have quantum computers. I've held two different chips in my hands.

Re:Not too optimistic

[z3alot]

Then again, AI which could beat humans at Go were 10 years away last year :)

Re:Not too optimistic

[RockDoctor]

Cold fusion has never been less than the square root of minus one years away, forward, backwards or sideways.

Fusion, on the other hand, has been an established fact for around 13 billion years. That we don't know how to do it using less than around 10^30 kilogrammes of hydrogen is our technological problem, not an existential problem for fusion. Hail the excited state of carbon-12!

Re:Not too optimistic

[RockDoctor]

Speaking as a Go player for over 30 years, while we had watched rapid advances over the last decade, leading to AI systems that could reliably make a 1-kyu or Shodan player work for their points, they were making progress at one or two points per year.

Last year's progress was more like 15 or 20 points. Which was a hell of a surprise. A hell of a surprise.

WE can do better

[wolfheart111]

Smoke another one. Alpha Centauri in my lifetime... TY

Re:You got 30 years

[wolfheart111]

On your mark... get set... GO!

NASA planning to spend budget

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA hasn't been relevant for some time now. It doesn't even have space shuttles. The ISS is mainly used as a budget marketing machine, with its occupants focused on playing social media ("oh look, we're watching Star Wars"). In the meantime it's just some stinky connected containers merely in orbit, to do necessary but boring research. NASA seems to be mainly here for itself, for the institution, to get your tax money. Going to Alpha Centauri is in no way relevant or realistic, except to get and spend budget. In the solar system, to future is commercial, and outside, the future isn't national.

Re: NASA planning to spend budget

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA has a pretty small budget. Which is why they aren't doing much.
It also doesn't help that Congress keeps getting in the way and changing goals.

Sending a probe to another system is a nice idea, but nobody today will still be alive by the time it gets there.

That would be pretty useless

[Solandri]

The goal is to send a probe to Alpha Centauri, some 4.3 light years away. NASA is working on technology to allow a spacecraft to reach 10% of the speed of light, which might allow them to reach Alpha Centauri in as soon as 44 years.

First, warp drives do not exist (yet). You cannot instantly jump to 10% the speed of light and spend 44 years coasting to Alpha Centauri. To travel 4.3 light years with a constantly accelerating technology would require you to hit 20% the speed of light, not 10%. If you constantly accelerate up to 10% the speed of light by the time you reach the destination, then it'll take you 87 years to traverse 4.367 light years, not 44 years.

Second, you don't want to be accelerating the entire trip. Otherwise once you reach the destination, you're traveling way too fast for the trip to be of any use. Assuming the Alpha Centauri system is about the same size as our solar system, a probe reaching it at 20% the speed of light would pass through the entire system in a little over a day. It's stupid to travel 44 years just to have one day of science gathering. To be useful, you need to accelerate to the halfway point, the decelerate to the destination.

This means the trip of 44 years would require hitting 20% the speed of light by the halfway point - it would need twice the acceleration of a mission which hit 20% at the destination. So combined with the 10% vs 20% speed of light error, you actually need to develop a technology with 4x the acceleration of a mission which would arrive at Alpha Centuari at 10% the speed of light.

Re:That would be pretty useless

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it would be hilarious if the probe was going too fast when it reached Alpha Centauri, and hit a planet colonized with alien life forms, and it sparked an interstellar war.

Re:That would be pretty useless

[Anonymous Coward]

What would make it impossible to speed up to 10 (or 20% for that matter) before being halfway? Why can't it hit 10% speed of light at 1% of the route and run out of energy to accelerate more?

Re:That would be pretty useless

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it has something to do with physics, and a lack of Star Trek type shielding for the vessel.

Re: That would be pretty useless

[Anonymous Coward]

Chewie, I said lock in the auxiliary power!!!

Grrrhhhrrah

Re:That would be pretty useless

[Zarhan]

Alastair Reynolds has a concept in Chasm City about a spaceship that has your more typical propulsion systems for minor adjustments, but they have two blocks of antimatter stored in a magnetic containment. They burn the first half as they are leaving Solar system, and then use the second half to decelerate at the end.

Now, since we can only generate antimatter a few atoms at a time - tops - the schedule is probably optimistic for such an approach. However, this is just to point our that there are alternatives to constant-thrust approach.

My money would be to use some sort of laser at Sun-earth Lagrange point to accelerate the ship, so they only need to bring propellant for the deceleration part. Another possibility would be a solar sail that would allow you to accelerate at this end and decelerate on approach.

Re:That would be pretty useless

[Anonymous Coward]

The engine would need to produce thrust several orders of magnitude higher, making the technology we need to invent that much harder.

Re:That would be pretty useless

[RockDoctor]

Now, since we can only generate antimatter a few atoms at a time - tops

We don't generate antimatter a few atoms at a time, we generate it a few sub-atomic particles at a time. Which are relatively easy to handle since they have electrical charges.

Then you react (say) anti-protons and anti-electrons to create an atom of anti-hydrogen. Which is great - one step forward. And terrible - you throw away your main "handle" for controlling the movement of the newly minted atoms, which are now electrically neutral. Trillions (qunitillions? quintillions of trillions??) of anti-particles have been generated deliberately, but the number of anti-atoms generated and controlled is down in the billions.

It's not impossible. But it is really fucking difficult.

As someone else is suggesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Quantum entangled particles, if you can keep at least one set of them stable for the entire journey, should avoid the issues with radio signal propagation 4.9 light years, even if it doesn't increase the rate/timeliness of transmission.

Even just being able to get a few photographs back from a remote star system would be pretty cool, but seriously, fucking 2069? We should make this a global moonshot goal and state 'we will have a probe AT Alpha Centauri *BY* 2069. And ideally not just one, at least 5-10 to cover both technical failures of the probes as well as

Re:As someone else is suggesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't use entanglement to pass information, period.

Whooooshhhhh.....

[Anonymous Coward]

There is knowledge, and there is intelligence. Possession of the former is no guarantee of possessing the latter. You exemplify this in quite the Trumpian manner.

Re:Whooooshhhhh.....

[K. S. Kyosuke]

That's weird; as a Central European political centrist, I'm usually accused of being a hopeless commie by you Yankees. :-p This is a new one. On the other topic, there's a certain level of correlation between the two. At the very least, below a certain level of intelligence, amassing knowledge becomes harder and ultimately impossible. So while there's no binaries in that matter, softer inferences do become possible.

Quantum computers: tech of the future.

[Anonymous Coward]

Always been, and always will be.

Tiny, cheap, fast

[burtosis]

I'm holding out some hope that laser propelled microsatellites are feasible. If you fired a stream of them you could piggy back broadcasts between them back to earth, greatly reducing the distance each would need to transmit to get back home. You wouldn't need to slow down either, with a steady stream of small disposable craft.

Re:Tiny, cheap, fast

[religionofpeas]

A laser beam would spread too wide to be useful to a microsatellite.

Re: Tiny, cheap, fast

[Monster_user]

Sounds like you're proposing building a fiber optic cable between solar systems.

Re: Tiny, cheap, fast

[RockDoctor]

If that is what it sounds like to you, then I do not want you installing fibre anywhere near me and mine.

There you have it.

[Anonymous Coward]

You exemplify the worst of both ideologies: the blowhard bluster of Trumpian capitalism with the âoeI, the thinking elite, know better than you, dirt diggerâ of communism.

Re:There you have it.

[K. S. Kyosuke]

OK... I appreciate your perspective (no matter how incoherent you are).

Re: Don't. Be. That. Guy.

[Anonymous Coward]

speaking of grammar nazis

allow them to reach Alpha Centauri in as soon as 44 years.

As soon as 2113. Or, in as little as 44 years. That's how I would have written it. YMMV

Also Sieg Heil is the response. You initiate with Heil Hitler. Just sayin'

Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR stunt

[eclectro]

The communications technology to reach across 4.3 light years doesn't exist yet either. Look at the great lengths that we need to stay in touch with the Voyager aircraft just barely out of our solar system - launched 40 years ago.

And don't expect humans to survive all the hard radiation that's out there either. So it'd have to be a robot mission.

Nope.

[gerald.edward.butler]

Quantum entangled particles DO NOT permit sending of information faster than light. You still have to send a "light-like" signal to know the results of the entanglement.

Re:Nope.

[Anonymous Coward]

He didn't imply it was. He suggested entangling A with B keeping A on earth and sending B on/to the probe. The probe modifies B to send the message. That information propagates to A at the speed of light and can be observed on earth. It doesn't mean a faster transmission but does solve the alignment issue.You just have to keep the quantum state stable until you send the message - which given that's going to be decades isn't easy. Transmitting B without corrupting the state is likely to be impossible and would return to the alignment issue so storing it in stasis on the probe is perhaps the better bet even though it limits the amount of data you can transmit. I don't see us having the technology to do that by 2069, if it would ever be possible.

Why!?

[Anonymous Coward]

What a fucking waste. Our advances in space technology have been negligible since the 1950s.

10% light speed does not = 44 years

[Crashmarik]

Unless the probe is able to withstand one hell of an acceleration outbound and isn't going to be in the Alpha Centauri system more than a few days.

Re:10% light speed does not = 44 years

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I think that is the plan... assuming 'one hell' = several thousand G's.

We have to accelerate that sucker fast, while it is close by. Any propulsion onboard the craft is too heavy, so all acceleration is 'ground based' - ie push the craft along with lasers.

Pluto is ~5 light hours away. Seems like we'd have trouble accelerating anything much further out than that with earth / ground based systems. So you need to hit 1/10C in 5 hours... which is effectively 'instantaneous' compared to the 44 yr coast time.

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't expect humans to survive all the hard radiation that's out there either. So it'd have to be a robot mission.

I don't think anyone expected any 20 year old humans to jump on a one way trip and spend the next 50 years on such a trip, radiation or not.

People keep bringing up the radiation in space as a major hurdle but here is the thing: It only becomes a problem with prolonged exposure. Another thing that becomes problematic at similar durations is the microgravity.
It is possible to build spacecrafts that protects you from both of them but it makes things a lot more complicated.
If you can keep the mission time down to 6 months or so you don't have to worry that much about them.
So the large obstacle is really the vast distances of space, not the immediate dangers out there.

Anyway, regarding this particular mission. Why the hurry? Sure, 44 years is a nice, but I don't see any particular threshold that makes it a no-go if the duration is longer.
Getting detailed information of at least one other star system would be really great.
At the moment our ways of detecting planets around other stars is a bit wonky and most of what we know is based on what we know from this one.
When it comes to moons, planetoids and asteroids in other star systems it is all just speculation.

The way I see it we shouldn't worry about how long it would take, just if it is possible to do it at all.
If it takes 500 years, then so be it. Sure, we may or may not find a way to do it in a shorter time 50 years from now, but that isn't really a good reason to wait.
We might not have the technology to send a signal all the way back right now so the probe might have to make a round trip, or we have to launch a couple of slower probes to act as repeaters.
All that is just technical issues, but not really reasons not to do it.

10% in 2069?

[nospam007]

And then they'll turn around because it's about time to brake for the next 50 years?

Re: 10% in 2069?

[Monster_user]

That is what I was wondering. Here on Earth we've got a lot of tight measurements of orbits and tech to accellerate the satellite.

However, once in Alpha Centari we're pretty much flying blind. There is going to be what, a 4-5 year lag between inputs? Would we even be able to send enough fuel to decellerate from 10% of lightspeed, and have anything left over to maneuver in system to gather data?

Re: 10% in 2069?

[Baron_Yam]

The nice thing about acceleration by solar sail is the same equipment will decelerate you if your target is another star.

The problem is you need a massive sail and a complete probe with an astonishingly low average density. As in, "You're not sending a useful payload" low. Certainly not a computer to handle navigation at the destination, nor instrumentation to detect interesting things, nor laser coms back to Earth.

Re: 10% in 2069?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the sail is big enough, it could communicate by selectively filtering out frequencies when it passes in front of the star.

Use Santa's Sleigh and Reindeer.

[pubwvj]

Santa travels at close to the speed of light and uses existing technology. Seems like that is the place to start. It does narrow the launch window as he is busy one day a year.

Merry Christmas space cadets!

[Anonymous Coward]

Space is fake. The Earth is flat. The eclipses prove it.

Microscopic Spacecraft

[Gavagai80]

Accelerating any significant mass to .1c may be practically impossible. Perhaps the least unlikely approach, given our continuing miniaturization progress, is a spacecraft that weighs micrograms. Laser acceleration would seem to be an option, but the problem there is deceleration at the destination, and transmission of data back to Earth. What we really need is something super-light capable of using solar power to both accelerate and decelerate to a sizeable fraction of c, and then the transmission problem can be solved by having it make a return trip using the destination star for power.

The ultimate unrealistic extreme of this approach in sci-fi would be the sophons from Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, which if I recall have the mass of one proton but unfold into useful spacecraft upon arrival.

Re: Microscopic Spacecraft

[Monster_user]

The mass of one proton? Why would it need to unfold? Is it more structurally sound for travel in deep space? Or is it more "aerodynamic"?

Something with so little mass will be equivalent to a spider web. Space debris in the destination system would tear it to shreds. And would we be able to hit whatever web like substance results from this distance?

On the plus side, if we could build a "quantum spaceship" the size of one proton, it could survive entirely on solar power.

Re: Microscopic Spacecraft

[Pembers]

The mass of one proton? Why would it need to unfold?

There was some handwaving about how space has more than three dimensions, but the extra ones are very small. (See string theory.) For the purposes of the story, subatomic particles exist mostly in the extra dimensions. The aliens took a proton and unfolded it out of the extra dimensions to make a spherical shell. (It was bigger than their planet...) They then inscribed circuitry on the shell to make an incredibly powerful computer, folded the shell back into a proton and sent it off to Earth. Quite why the circuitry didn't add to the proton's mass wasn't clear to me.

Re: Microscopic Spacecraft

[Monster_user]

Sounds like the circuitry added minimal mass to its shell, given its immense size. In addition, most of its circuitry was likely stored in extra-dimensionally. I am curious as to how the physics are supposed to work across these dimensions. How can something with so much extra mass connected to it be movable on this "side"?

Re: Microscopic Spacecraft

[Pembers]

I don't recall whether it was explained in any more detail. I think you were meant to be impressed that the aliens could do it at all :-) Perhaps, as you say, the mass of the circuitry is small in comparison with the mass of the proton. Or perhaps mass or gravity doesn't exist or doesn't count in the extra dimensions. I wondered if the proton already contained a lot of structure, so that the unfolded shell wasn't simply a uniform surface. That is, maybe the aliens could've made the circuitry by rearranging what was already there.

Re: Microscopic Spacecraft

[Gavagai80]

I wouldn't be too sure about space debris being a problem. Space dust is quite diffuse and a microscopic probe means there's much less surface area to get hit.

Re:Microscopic Spacecraft

[david_thornley]

Ten percent of the speed of light is plenty fast enough for many purposes. Project Orion (nuclear bombs for thrust) was thought to possibly be able to get to that speed with a large rocket.

Get your t-shirt...

[Anonymous Coward]

Either "Remember when we had NINE planets?" shirt or "Get in loser this planet blows" shirt will commentate this event nicely.

The most realistic solution (under 40 yrs)

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Build global AI
2. Send probe
3. Deep freeze humanity. AI takes care of the planet for thousands of years.
4. Defreeze humanity just before probe comes back
Perhaps we can indeed achieve step 1 in under 50 years, then we still have 40 years to make step 3 & 4 feasible.
OK, specifications met, we have a plan!

NS article paywalled, what does it say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I expect New Scientist wouldn't make the 44 years mistake.

Stupid space race.

[Anonymous Coward]

Creating black-holes here in the Earth can teleport them to any space & time in the universe.
Is it the thing that you was looking for?.

Do. Not. Be. That. Guy.

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet your fun at partys..

Ha ha, land of the free!

[Anonymous Coward]

NASA will have no funding & cease to exist within 5 years because TRILLIONS of debt. The future of space is chinks greenscreened in a pool. WOW. Such future!

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[ShanghaiBill]

So it'd have to be a robot mission.

Duh. Both the summary and TFA make it clear that this would be a probe, not a manned mission. It would be a flyby, passing through the Alpha Centauri solar system in minutes, since slowing down and going into orbit would require exponentially more fuel. The proposals are for a probe the size of a pack of cigarettes, or even the size of a postage stamp, driven by a laser boosted sail.

The proposed budget is ~ $100M. A manned mission would cost many many trillions.

Small-minded pussy-retards. Generation-defining.

[Anonymous Coward]

Definition of this generation: Everything is a threat, everything becomes a war, nothing is possible, we're all losers baby.
Small-minded to the max, no ambitions, fully passive, ... hide, consume, whine, repeat.
Well, they are kinda right. ... But only about their world.

PROJECT ORION!

[Anonymous Coward]

What planet are you on, where project Orion isn't already known to be fully capable of that right now!

We have build nukes. we have build small tactical warhead nukes. We have build a large lead plate with a hole. We have build shock absorbers that hold skyscrapers. We have built large rockets. We have had robots land by themselves on another planet.

It’s just a matter of combining those things in a very simple way. Simple math already tells us this will bring us to 10% speed of light. That’s not even with anything beyond 60s knowledge and ambition.

And a matter of having the will to plow through the small-minders and retards who believe that everything they can’t imagine cannot possibly be possible, let alone already done. (Kinda like doctors.)

Re:I'll mark this down in my calendar...

[Anonymous Coward]

CREIMER' SUBMISSIONS UPDATE:
Note also that creimer is trying to regain karma by getting his submissions published as articles on /. so make sure to go to:
https://slashdot.org/~cdreimer
https://slashdot.org/~Anonymou...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
https://slashdot.org/~ILoveFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IHateFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IAteFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~ITapeFat...
https://slashdot.org/~IApeFatC...
https://slashdot.org/~IPrayFat...
https://slashdot.org/~FatCashe...
and mod down his submissions as well. The great thing is that you don't even need mod points to mod down a submission, just click on the "minus" icon!

Yes, believe it or not, creimer owns all the above sock puppet accounts. It is a mystery why Slashdot management tolerates it!

creimer wrote:

I don't bother with mod points. I'm doing something much more sinister. It took ten story submissions ? I'll have to double check the number ? to move cdreimer's karma from neutral to excellent without ever being exposed to the capricious mods. Mmmmmwwwwahahahahahahaha!

https://slashdot.org/comments....

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger! Creimy is posting more than 2 posts a day. Hurry! mod down otherwise /. will go to hell again!

Note: you can mod down even if already at -1 to lower karma and to prevent lost /. users to accidentally mod up.

creimer wrote:

All you need to do is find a website with a permissive TOS, say, Slashdot, create a Python script to scrape your own comments, sprinkle Amazon affiliate links in various posts, and then re-post past links whenever possible. Won't be long before you start making "coffee money" each month.

https://slashdot.org/comments....

C.D. Reimer is a renowned Slashdot collaborator, as he puts it himself; "Because of the quality of my posts and my article submissions, I'm a highly rated commentator and moderator."

But does anybody ever wondered what "C.D." stands for? Well, it stands for Creimy Dumpty of course!

Creimy Dumpty sat on the wall,
Creimy Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses
And all the king's men
Couldn't put Creimy Dumpty
Together again.

Creimy's siblings video and theme song, very realistic, especially the pants, just like Creimy's:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

With "Vice President Pence Vowing US Astronauts Will Return To the Moon", we are sure they will need miracle workers up there, here is what it would look like. Note that Creimy takes care of bringing a lot of food to the moon as depicted below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Creimy's real pictures:
Before the sex change:
https://ibb.co/cc7Ddw
After the sex change:
https://ibb.co/gVad65

Creimy's "enterprise-level" chair, he talks about it all the time on slashdot:
http://www.keynamics.com/image...

Creimy's head, while his supervisor was talking to him, not with him, since it is impossible to do with Creimy:

Re:I'll mark this down in my calendar...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hello cdreimer! :-)

I took the liberty to edit your video and repost my new version on youtube. I am sure that you will approve and enjoy the enhancements.

See the new version here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

No They Aren't "Planning an Interstellar Mission"

[careysub]

This is the account given by the New Scientist article:

The impetus came from a 2016 US funding bill telling NASA to study interstellar travel that could reach at least 10 per cent of the speed of light by 2069.

“It’s very nebulous,” says Anthony Freeman at JPL, who presented the mission concept at the 2017 American Geophysical Union conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, on 12 December.

In other words NASA was directed in a funding bill to study interstellar travel, with the launch date and performance mandated in the legislation! And NASA's response to this requirement imposed by lawmakers is to offer a "very nebulous" study.

Nothing to see here, just a beleaguered agency trying to address a ridiculous idea from a space nutter lawmaker.

Re:I'll mark this down in my calendar...

[Anonymous Coward]

You think this is funny troll meanwhile creimer video is ranked number one with only 5 views!

https://www.youtube.com/result...

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[Anonymous Coward]

So it'd have to be a robot mission.

Duh. Both the summary and TFA make it clear that this would be a probe, not a manned mission. It would be a flyby, passing through the Alpha Centauri solar system in minutes,

It depends on where you define the boundaries of the Star System. If you include the cocoon of debris enveloping the star [an Oort Cloud-like structure], and your ship can travel at c, we're talking about more than a year.

Ten percent of c? Years;

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[ShanghaiBill]

It depends on where you define the boundaries of the Star System

I was thinking of the time to pass through the Goldilocks zone, where liquid surface water can exist. It would zip through that in about an hour at 0.1c.

Everyone here posting about this will be Long dead

[Bruha]

Depressing actually. Hell my children might see it get there. I have no faith that the singularity would go beyond the wealthy. The poor will be forced to die.

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[Kjella]

The proposed budget is ~ $100M. A manned mission would cost many many trillions.

That sounds more like an early concept exploration budget, you don't even get a Mars probe for $100M. If they can even find a workable interstellar probe concept I'm guessing it'll be closer to a trillion dollar project. And sending humans to Alpha fucking Centauri? Not if you dedicated the whole GDP of the world from now to 2069 to the task.

'69 is a pretty thematic year for space travel

[z3alot]

Maybe we can make it two centuries in a row!

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[ShanghaiBill]

you don't even get a Mars probe for $100M.

The proposed mission to Alpha Centauri has a thousandfold smaller payload than the recent Mars missions.

Too late

[Frankie70]

Matthew McConaughey will be dead by then.

Freeciv

[menkhaura]

So now the U.S. want to win Freeciv? Without even putting people on Martian soil?

I wish best of luck for you.

2069 sound about right...

[Anonymous Coward]

...after all, First Contact Day was..er...is...er... will be April 5, 2063. Every Star Trek fan knows that's when Efram Cochrane launched the first warp speed vessel and the Vulcans came to Earth. I'm guessing by 2069 will have perfected warp speed for interstellar travel, with help from the Vulcans, of course!

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[david_thornley]

The proposals are for a probe the size of a pack of cigarettes, or even the size of a postage stamp,

Which seems senseless to me. Could such a probe even transmit anything back to Earth? Could such a probe collect interesting data in the first place? Could it serve any purpose other than crashing into a planet with a potentially hostile civilization?

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[RockDoctor]

I was thinking of the time to pass through the Goldilocks zone, where liquid surface water can exist.

"Goldilocks Zone"? Meh. We don't know for certain that it is possible to generate life in the sub-surface oceans of icy moons, but we do know that it is possible to combine chemical energy, liquid water and extended periods of time in such an environment. To discount such environments would be rash. It would make a mockery of any pretensions we have to being rational organisms.

At the costs of such an expedition, it would be ludicrous to not send something that can stay and report back to Earth. If that means more than doubling the mission length (to centuries, not multiple decades), then we should bite that bullet to get a first-version of a vonNeumann machine into another system. Once that has starting to build a space-bourn industry, then the human species is one large step closer to spreading through the rest of the universe. We may not be a wonderful species, but to the best of our knowledge, we're the only self-aware species in the universe. That's a big egg to have in one basket.

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[RockDoctor]

And sending humans to Alpha fucking Centauri?

So?

You don't do that. If you think it is important to send the genetics of humans to Alpha Centauri, then that's fine and good. Send the information. It's a small fraction of a gramme if you encode it as DNA molecules, probably less if you send it in some other encoding. You'll also need to send the information to build an incubation system, and to build the necessary infrastructure, but those are tasks that are under research already. Long before the "landing lasers" (opposite end of the "launching lasers" for Breakthrough Starshot) get ground-broken, you could have humans growing in artificial wombs over there.

Lather, rinse and repeat for the next star system out. A generation time of a century or two per colonisation is within the bounds of possibility. Each generation halves the probability of the human species dieing out. The odds of any human ever dieing in a different star system to the one in which they were born will remain small.

Star Trek it ain't, but it doesn't break the laws of physics.

Re:Actually thats a drug induced haze, not a PR st

[RockDoctor]

Could such a probe even transmit anything back to Earth?

Pretty hard to do on it's own. But since the proposal only requires the "launching lasers" to fire for a few months (until the probe is out in the Kuiper Belt) ... would you really only launch one probe then dismantle the lot?

Of course you woudn't - you'd launch a whole series of probes. Some at (say) 2.01 c, 1.99 c, 1.98 c, 1.97 c, ... (and not necessarily in that order) so that you havve multiple probes slowly separating in distance from Earth. The closer probes can then act as information relays for the more distant probes.

Perhaps you have to build your "launching lasers" on an asteroid - so at some times of the year it's line of fire would pass inconveniently close to the Sun (or Earth, or Jupiter ... or Planet 9 (of Brown & Batygin 2016) for several months. So, you leave it un-used? Or you launch the first batch of probes towards Procyon?

Could such a probe collect interesting data in the first place?

Hmmm, New Horizons? I don't see this being a big problem. Communications back to base being a bigger problem. And there wouldn't be a single probe anyway.

Could it serve any purpose other than crashing into a planet with a potentially hostile civilization?

Very low probability. And also utterly irrelevant. Decades before the probe arrives in the target system, the "launching lasers" would have put a flickering brilliant light in the sky of the target. Further reading : first dozen or so chapters of "The Mote in God's Eye", 1991 by Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle, Publisher: Pocket Books (March 1, 1991) Language: English ISBN-10: 0671741926.

Re:No They Aren't "Planning an Interstellar Missio

[CanadianMacFan]

You do realize that all they are doing is looking at Stephen Hawking's plan to send small probes to Alpha Centauri using solar sails given a huge boost by lasers.

It is a stupid idea but for different reasons. A small electronic payload will go by the system at 0.10c. If we're lucky we'll get a picture that we can call Great {Whatever Colour} Dot. Of course that's assuming our imaging technology works at 0.10c. Then we have no way sending images back but maybe someone can turn the sail into an antenna with some light bracing. Maybe the aliens there could shine a laser at the sail and slow it down for us and we could get a proper picture of their star system.