New Propulsion, the "EM Drive"

Somehow I question that anything as small as those probes could contain either the power be it solar of nuclear or radios/lasers that could span light years.

Do not forget that they will have a sun with all it noise directly behind them also at least as far as earth is concern

Relay chains still seem call for.

I'll ask the aliens when they come for me . . . but i remain skeptical. They use dimensional warping and the travel rewards from their VISA cards.

Seriously, though . . . try the veal . . .

Stephen Hawking, Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckcerberg announced the use of such a drive system in the program to send probes Alpha Centauri and Pismo Beach. It was just announced a few days ago.

Hawking, Zuckerberg unveil $10B plan to reach Alpha Centauri in 20 years

If it were to pan out, we'd be getting data back under 25 years after launch.

Are you talking about solar sails and lasers or the fairy tale non-newtonian drive?

Of one thing you can be certain, Billy Boy--i'm almost never talking to you.

the whole gizmo looks like a conceptual design of Da Vinci's "parachute"
Its a pyramidal shapes "Sail" that is supr pulsed by a bigass battery of lasers that will fire the thing up to 0.20 (c) in a few minutes , SO, using inertia, the thing will take off for ALPHA Centauri (I said proxima-sorry-I just thought thyed go for the closest one but probably its the fact that a solar charged cell phone would work better at A centauri.)

In case there is an accident en route (such as a meteor strike) They will be launching maybe a hundred of these a few days apart.

The first ones wont carry the teeny crew members. BUT there is a problem. The super laser array will cause the earth's rotational enrgy to be really fucked up. SO they will have to make sure that the star is in the same plane that contains the same earths axial rotation

My my you could hurt my feelings..........

The article says they'll launch a thousand of them from the "mother ship."

I have other reasons for being skeptical of the utility of the Centauri trinary star system--although a little research would clear up some of my doubts--but i'm far more interested in the star system we inhabit, so i haven't bothered.

Barnard's star, which appears to be a very old star, hasn't been found ot have planets--but if it did, the objections i have to the Centauri system would be obviated.

Nonsense as far as a few minutes are concern to reach 1/4 c unless the probes can take a few tens of millions G of acceleration or more.

Do not feel like running the numbers at the moment.

If you want to argue the point. I was paraphrasing this guy named Hawking who is some university physicist who "ran the math".
It gets launched from a station out in space where it achieves about 50K/mph when hey light up the focus beam. The array depisted contains parabolic reflectors (outward) fired at Y ** = 4px and set up the "gunbarrel problem familiar to beginning calc students. This Hawking Guy says that theyd make Jupiter in 3 hours. and Alpha Centauri in about 25 years.

Theyd recharge the lasers and fire new probes every two days.
The idea is to successively load the sail with added laser beams until .20 (c) is attained , and they claimed just a few minutes.

You know when someone made a statement that is impossible as far as the laws of physic is concern I do not care who name is connected to it.

Let run the numbers for 1/4 c in 20 minutes.

v=a*t

v=1/4 C=7.4948e+7 meters/sec
t=20 minutes =20*60 sec=1200

a in meters/sec^2=7.4948*10^7/1200=6.24*10^5

so the G force is 62000 times one earth G.

Less then I assume without running the numbers but still no probe is going to take 62 thousands it weight.

Agreed. Do you think 31g would be too much for a well built probe to withstand? If not, it could get up to speed in four weeks. How would one calculate the force that a laser could impart to a light sail? You would have to know the mass of the craft plus the sail, the surface area of the sail, the reflectivity of the sail and the power of the laser. Also the rate at which the laser loses it's focus, and how much the atmosphere would interfere with the beam and how much, if any dust it would encounter in space. lots of variables. Also, once the probes reach another star system, do they just zip right through? At .2c they would have to take some pretty quick photos. Did anyone mention if they would try to slow them down at the destination? I think they could maneuver themselves 180 degrees and use Alpha Centauri to slow them down via their light sails.

Where did the 20 minutes come from? Did you just make that figure up?

Here is an article that cover some of the problems of getting such probes to function.

http://news.discovery.com/space/is-hawkings-interstellar-starshot-possible-160414.htm

Now yes indeed you could spend far more time then 20 minutes and by doing so greatly decrease the stress on the probes and the sails but then you run into the problem of transferring massive energy from the lasers to tiny tiny probes at 100s of AU distant from the sun at the end of those weeks.

As far as trying to used a star to slow the probes down there is no way that a star any star could product the needed braking for a solar sail craft going at 1/4 C. after lasers had pump that speed up.

They are going to be spending maybe a few hours at most within any useful range of the target system and tens of minutes at a few AU distant from the star.

An of course there is the problem of getting the information back to earth from those flybys.

Farmerman gave the 20 minutes figure or at least a few minutes total time not me so you will need to ask him.

Thats the problem with believing you know something Bill, youre always being surprised.
With Moores law being as dead on as its been, weve already got the capability to develop a postage stamp sized gizmo that can act as a machine and a robot and a tv camera . Hawking was speculating on a physical limit of "shrinkage" of the crafts electronics. Is it even a limit.

We already accelerate "rail gun" pellets of zircon titanide at 50 g, and this nanocraft would NOIT be starting from zero when its fired on.
Heat dissipation is, as I understand , a matter of developing a lattice" so the thing acts like a particle in space.

The only real limit I see that they havent been able to overcome is "slamming into somethiong " by an unsteerable vessel. SO for this problem, they will plan to launch hundreds rather than just one. That way they use gaming statistics.

Dont be a buzzkill even if you think you know it all Bill.
My cell phone of today has more computing and communication power than the entire space program had at the time of the moon launch. When we think we know something we always fail to recognize "breakthroughs" in science that will occur in the next generations.

I, for one, am gonna keep reading the literature about this over the next few years.
As far as Im concerned, the only limitations to such a project is
1. determination
2 institutional hubris
everything else is just an unforeseen challenge that can be met.

Tht was in the announcement about the projct and the team.

I can think of no better example of hubris than Billy claiming he understands the math better than Stephen Hawking. Of course, his understanding might improve if he were actually to read up on the proposed project. However, i've always found Billy to be short of sources for his claims, and long on arrogance.

Absolutely! Name me one?
Then prove it to be true.

I agree.
If 'free-energy' Tesla ionic field generated - were actually free - There would be no need for 'labour' by anyone.
Would you grant this to your 'resource-gatherers'?
Future giggling - expected.