Breakthrough Starshot

[Grey Havoc]

Stephen Hawking and Billionaire Team Up on $100 Million Quest to Find Alien Life

Stephen Hawking and Russian billionaire Yuri Milner are teaming up in a $100 million hunt for alien life using a postage stamp-sized spacecraft.

abcnews.go.com

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/science/alpha-centauri-breakthrough-starshot-yuri-milner-stephen-hawking.html

How to reach Alpha Centauri in just 20 years

New York (AFP) April 12, 2016 - Billionaire Russian investor Yuri Milner and British cosmologist Stephen Hawking on Tuesday announced an ambitious new space initiative for a mission to Alpha Centauri, the nearest star system to Earth.

www.spacedaily.com

http://www.space.com/32548-20-percent-light-speed-to-alpha-centauri-nanocraft-concept-unveiled-video.html

Hawking backs interstellar travel project

Professor Stephen Hawking backs a project to send spaceships to another solar system within a generation

www.bbc.com

China welcomes Stephen Hawking on Weibo with awe

Chinese Weibo users welcome Prof Stephen Hawking's entry into the microblogging network with warmth and admiration.

www.bbc.com

Breakthrough Initiatives

The Breakthrough Initiatives are a set of space science programs exploring life beyond Earth, launched in 2015 by tech investor and science philanthropist Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking.

breakthroughinitiatives.org

 

[Avimimus]

This sounds quite useful actually...

I assume the array could be dialled down in power and used to propel larger in-system probes?

I wonder if the laser array could be used to clear up space debris?

What about ablating near earth comets to change their trajectory on future passes (or would it have to be much more powerful to do that?)

I also wonder if one could propel relay spacecraft and form a breadcrumb like trail of relativist relays in order to increase data bandwidth...?

 

[Avimimus]

By the way, could you also use such a large field of lasers for this?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_9ac-w4DW8

Perhaps you could build in aerodynamics to ensure that any small vehicle that failed in its ascent diverted a few kilometres while falling back and thus missed the laser field.

 

[Deltafan]

Well it, seems that the nearest neighborough of Alpha Centauri, Proxima Centauri, the nearest star of ours, has a potentially habitable planet.

National Geographic

Explore National Geographic. A world leader in geography, cartography and exploration.

news.nationalgeographic.com

Maybe an extra motivation for the Breakthrough Starshot team

 

[lastdingo]

It's extremely challenging to get probes a few gram heavy to the next star system.
There's nothing really on the horizon that could get a probe there that would be able to sense and then radio back some findings over lightyears of distance.

 

[Flyaway]

If you're in the U.K. the last edition of The Sky At Night to be broadcast was all about this project in relation to Proxima b.

BBC Four - The Sky at Night, Interstellar: The Journey to Proxima b

The team focuses on our nearest neighbouring star - Proxima Centauri.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[FighterJock]

If you're in the U.K. the last edition of The Sky At Night to be broadcast was all about this project in relation to Proxima b.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07vxfqp

A highly fascinating episode. Makes you think if Alpha Centauri has Earth-like planets too since that is a more sun-like star than Proxima.

 

[CaseyKnight]

The probes are only as big as a cell?

 

[Desert Dawn]

Now we are talking ! When i heard the news a few weeks ago on the radio (our national news service is a bit slow to catch up these things), i thought, 20 Years with a solar sail ?! Wow... they must have invented a whole new type regatta sail model with a space spinnaker. That's an incredibly short time to go to another star system with just a sail versus what i was reading about the minimum duration time needed with the state of the art theoretical propulsion systems just a few decades ago. But then the network neglected the part about the laser. It makes sense now.

So i might actually see what a world in another solar system looks like during my living years (if they accelerate the pace a bit). It will be fantastic if we can get images, hopefully, there will be a breakthrough.

 

[Flyaway]

This seems relevant to this thread. A private initiative to launch a space telescope to image any planets around the Alpha Centauri binary pair.

Project Blue

www.projectblue.org

 

[Grey Havoc]

Researchers Just Launched a Prototype of Humanity's First 'Interstellar Spacecraft'

Last year, extraterrestrial exploration venture Breakthrough Initiatives announced an ambitious plan to send tons of tiny spacecraft to our nearest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri. The project, called Breakthrough Starshot, is focused on launching lightweight ‘nanocraft’ to the stars at...

gizmodo.com

 

[Deltafan]

Thanks Grey Havoc

 

[Flyaway]

Breakthrough Propulsion Architecture gets Phase 2 NIAC funding

Breakthrough Propulsion Architecture gets Phase 2 NIAC funding | NextBigFuture.com

The breakthrough architecture uses a kilometer-scale, multi-hundred-megawatt phased-array laser to beam power to a vehicle that converts it to electrical

www.nextbigfuture.com

 

[Rhinocrates]

Anton Petrov gives an update, looking at configurations, technologies, materials, and timetable. Links in the description. Even if it doesn't happen, it promises major advances in lightsails, communications and metamaterials that could be used, for example, to make lensless cameras.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwPTF_TZvWY&ab_channel=AntonPetrov

 

[Scott Kenny]

The challenge is building a probe small enough to get to the target at a reasonable time, yet big enough to send data back home.

This strikes me as the ideal use for nanotech, if we could make that work. Make it so that the probe can turn the lightsail into a radio antenna, for example.

 

[abheiden]

The challenge is building a probe small enough to get to the target at a reasonable time, yet big enough to send data back home.

This strikes me as the ideal use for nanotech, if we could make that work. Make it so that the probe can turn the lightsail into a radio antenna, for example.

Maybe they can use the other side of the lightsail as a solar panel to use the light from proxima as power to send the data to earth.
Maybe then more power then the power levels from a cell phone as in the current plan.

 

[Dilandu]

The challenge is building a probe small enough to get to the target at a reasonable time, yet big enough to send data back home.

This strikes me as the ideal use for nanotech, if we could make that work. Make it so that the probe can turn the lightsail into a radio antenna, for example.

Why bother with radio? The drone is supposed to be equipped with lasers for both maneuvering and communications.

 

[Scott Kenny]

Why bother with radio? The drone is supposed to be equipped with lasers for both maneuvering and communications.

Mostly because lasers have terrible energy conversion efficiency. Though they have been getting better.

 

[Dilandu]

Mostly because lasers have terrible energy conversion efficiency. Though they have been getting better.

So what? Their beams are not directly subjected to inverse-square law, which affect radio signals. And their beams are much better in penetrating interstellar medium. Not to mention, they allow much better data compression.

For microscopic probe, there is no point of even trying to use radio. Lasers are much more efficient - and it would be carrying lasers anyway as photon maneuvering drives. It's just reasonable to use them for communication also.