12-24-2016, 11:53 PM
Actually this idea has been posted to the forum earlier this year:
Link
IIRC the general consensus was that it was interesting, but needed a huge amount of development work to take it much of anywhere past the 'fun idea' zone. Also, that the political issues of getting anyone to approve giant laser cannon being built on or near Earth might be a bigger challenge than all of the technical challenges combined.
The idea of it being built within our lifetimes was deemed pretty improbable.
Regarding your question:
A minimalist one-way star probe design such as Starshot is not designed to slow down. The individual probes just fly through their target system, transmitting as much data as they can and then zip off into interstellar space, never to be seen again. Space is very big and the odds of the probes hitting anything significant or ever being recovered are considered to be infinitesimal. Or, they will eventually just be ground away or outright destroyed via collisions with interstellar gas and dust.
Todd
Link
IIRC the general consensus was that it was interesting, but needed a huge amount of development work to take it much of anywhere past the 'fun idea' zone. Also, that the political issues of getting anyone to approve giant laser cannon being built on or near Earth might be a bigger challenge than all of the technical challenges combined.
The idea of it being built within our lifetimes was deemed pretty improbable.
Regarding your question:
A minimalist one-way star probe design such as Starshot is not designed to slow down. The individual probes just fly through their target system, transmitting as much data as they can and then zip off into interstellar space, never to be seen again. Space is very big and the odds of the probes hitting anything significant or ever being recovered are considered to be infinitesimal. Or, they will eventually just be ground away or outright destroyed via collisions with interstellar gas and dust.
Todd