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Billionaires … In … Space!
A rendering of the “nanocraft” that would be sent as part of Breakthrough Starshot. The lightsail is about a meter wide. The starchip is the little dot in the center.
A Russian oligarch, Mark Zuckerberg, and Stephen Hawking walk into a bar… No this isn’t a joke, but a pretty cool space proposal. Their idea is to launch a fleet of laser-propelled “nanocrafts” that would swarm to the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, in a 20-year voyage. It would take about four more years for the mini-probes to transmit photos and readings back to earth.
“The human story is one of great leaps,” said Yuri Milner, billionaire CEO of DST Global. “55 years ago today, Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Today, we are preparing for the next great leap — to the stars.”
The project is called Breakthrough Starshot (sounds like a bad Yes album) and requires at least $100 million to evolve from a pipe dream to a working plan. Then they’ll need up to $10 billion more (or 650.46 billion rubles) to actually get it off the ground.
The first step of the program involves building light-propelled “nanocrafts” that can travel at relativistic speeds—up to 20 percent the speed of light. At such high velocities, the robotic spacecraft would pass Pluto in three days and reach our nearest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri, just over 20 years after launch…
The technology behind the billionaire’s ambitious proposal—of which prototypes were revealed today—includes a “Starchip,” a gram scale wafer carrying cameras, photon thrusters, power supply, navigation, and communication equipment. Propelling that miniature science laboratory is a “Lightsail,” a meter-sized sail that’s only a few hundred atoms thick and weighs a couple of grams. The light sail will be launched away from the Earth by a phased array of lasers, which Milner envisions carrying a combined power of over 100 Gigawatts, similar to the power needed to lift the Space Shuttle off Earth.
By directing that much energy at an object weighing just a few grams, we can theoretically accelerate said object up to 100,000,000 miles per hour—a thousand times faster than the fastest spacecraft today. The idea is to launch a small fleet of craft toward Alpha Centauri, allowing us to perform many, many New Horizon-like flybys of our nearest neighbor’s potentially habitable real-estate.
If this all sounds like the insanely ambitious fantasy of a starstruck billionaire, that’s because it is. But according to Milner, it’s also doable with technology not too far off. He believes we can be deploying our first nanocraft within a generation.
“The Breakthrough concept is based on technology either already available or likely to be available in the near future,” Milner said. “But as with any moonshot, there are major hurdles to be solved.”
It’s a starshot, not a moonshot, Yuri.
The most expensive part of this project is the massive array of earth-bound lasers which will propel the little suckers into the void. On their way, the probes could snap test pics of our own solar system from angles we’ve never seen.
What do you think, Ricochetti? Does this plan have a chance at success — either in tech or in the massive funding required?
Published in Science & Technology
…or a good Yes album.
You’re right. I screwed up the decimal place. I don’t see how this is possible.
Investors save your money.
I’ve never really understood this concern. The universe is (to understate things) really big and mostly unpopulated. The main reasons to invade another planet would be resources and workers. There is much lower hanging fruit resource-wise however, for a civilization capable of interstellar travel. Mine an asteroid or two. Presumably, they would also be sufficiently technically adept to build capable robots for any menial tasks. So, what (aside from sheer meanness, which is possible) would be the motivation for invading?
Habitability for colonization.
Is the proposed trip a high-speed fly-by, or do they stop?
FWIW&IIRC, Dr. Forward had a method of reflecting the laser light in such a way as to decelerate at the target star. The big round sail separates into “donut” and “hole,” with one element then turning around so it can receive reflected laser light from the other.
I like the metaphor of dandelion fluff in hurricane force winds. There would be no maneuvering; the challenge would be to ‘blow’ them accurately with one strong puff of ‘wind’.
Well, that’s about as likely as teleporting there. :)
Navigation and guidance will be a challenge. The distance to Alpha Centauri is about 1.3 parsecs. That means one arcsecond of directional error in the flight of the nanoprobes as they leave the solar system results in missing Alpha Centauri by more than the distance from the Earth to the Sun. An arcsecond is about 0.00028°. And the flight path of the nanoprobes will continue to be curved by the Sun’s gravity and that of the planets for years after they leave the solar system.
I would be surprised if our gravitational maps are accurate enough to calculate orbits with that precision, let alone to actually fly one. Unless we can somehow fire up those lasers to adjust their velocity along the way. But a lateral velocity adjustment would be very hard at that distance.
Just thinking out loud.
That’s why I was surprised to learn they are only talking about 30 minutes of laser. I had previously assumed perhaps years (based on what I’ve seen of setups to launch a manned craft).
I think they would be happy with only one astral unit off, and I doubt they would be trying to blow them directly into the star. Better readings if they just blow through the system.
Agreed. But remember it’s 1.3 AU of miss per arcsecond of error. Pluto’s mean orbital radius is about 41 AU. I would expect the velocity to be off by at least tens or hundreds of arcseconds or more, so the miss would be multiples of Pluto’s distance from the sun. I wonder what kind of instruments you can mount on a 1 gram spacecraft that would be useful at that distance.
No disagreement here, but the cost mentioned is well under 1% of Mark Zuckerberg’s assets. If I had that kind of money I would spend that much on a probably loony, but extremely cool idea. And hey… jobs for Americans.
The speed of the Alien invasion in the TV show, “The Colony” Is how it would be. Nothing we could do. They found trouble makers based on places like Ricochet.
This seems terribly inefficient to me. For only 1.21 gigawatts we could send a DeLorean there.
At 20% of the speed of light, a collision en route will destroy pretty much anything.
Reminds me of Relativistic Baseball.
Seems like you might be able to detect a few hundred (tens?) physical objects coming in at 20% of light speed.
The best design would have a perfect mirror finish on the side towards the laser, and be space black on the other side, which would be the side pointing towards the Centurians. And they are too small to block out much of anything, so they would be tough to spot.
There would be a nice bright flash of 100 GW laser light that would give away our location to the Centurians even if they can’t detect the probes.
That was my thought in an earlier comment. Someone else suggested that it wouldn’t be bright enough but I don’t know. I eventually figured out a way to part of the math, but not all of it. It might be a significant increase, and it could be green or red or some other distinctly non yellow dwarf color. But these guys are only talking about 30 minutes… a lot harder to spot.
Like the WOW signal?
From their end it could look something like that.
That’s jigawatts.