201–210 of 411 posts
If Voyager could stay operational and keep its speed of ~61,000 km/hr, it would reach the nearest star (Proxima Centauri) in about 72,000 years. My mind understands the numbers, but can't grasp them.
No, it would no reach that star. It is not aimed at it but at the constellation Ophiuchus.
It’s wild how Voyager forces two truths to sit together: Technically, what we’ve done is almost boringly modest. ~17 km/s ~1 light-day in ~50 years No realistic way to steer it anywhere meaningful now On cosmic scales it’s… basically still on our doorstep. Psychologically, it’s still one of the most ambitious things we’ve ever done. We built something meant to work for decades, knowing the people who launched it woul…
U made me cry on HN
It’s wild how Voyager forces two truths to sit together: Technically, what we’ve done is almost boringly modest. ~17 km/s ~1 light-day in ~50 years No realistic way to steer it anywhere meaningful now On cosmic scales it’s… basically still on our doorstep. Psychologically, it’s still one of the most ambitious things we’ve ever done. We built something meant to work for decades, knowing the people who launched it woul…
I like to think the Plumbob bore cap overtook Voyager 1 quite some time ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Plumbbob
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Agree. Voyager is probably considered by many to be one of our greatest achievements. It makes me wonder when we'll have anything set foot in another star system. I would guess realistically after 2100, but then we went from the Wright brothers to landing on the moon in under 70 years... so I may be proven wrong.
Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen. Back of the envelope math - 4.2 light years to the nearest star that's not the sun, current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager (e.g. 1 light day in 5 years). If something was launched today it would get to the nearest star system in about 7,660 years (assuming that star system also a radius of 1 light day). 100x faster than current (1…
It's maybe too speculative to even matter, but I don't think it's _crazy_ to imagine a handful of AI-fueled advances in materials discovery during the next decade or two. Possibly enough to unlock laser fusion, or something that could be crammed onto a spacecraft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. Voyager is probably considered by many to be one of our greatest achievements. It makes me wonder when we'll have anything set foot in another star system. I would guess realistically after 2100, but then we went from the Wright brothers to landing on the moon in under 70 years... so I may be proven wrong.
Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen. Back of the envelope math - 4.2 light years to the nearest star that's not the sun, current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager (e.g. 1 light day in 5 years). If something was launched today it would get to the nearest star system in about 7,660 years (assuming that star system also a radius of 1 light day). 100x faster than current (1…
For machine intelligence, though, it would be easy. Just switch yourself off for a few thousand years.
It's likely that our "children" will go to the stars, not us.
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Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen. Back of the envelope math - 4.2 light years to the nearest star that's not the sun, current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager (e.g. 1 light day in 5 years). If something was launched today it would get to the nearest star system in about 7,660 years (assuming that star system also a radius of 1 light day). 100x faster than current (1…
Just spitballing, but maybe it would be possible with relatively modest advances in ion thrusters, and one (admittedly less-than-modest) breakthrough with fusion. It's maybe too speculative to even matter, but I don't think it's _crazy_ to imagine a handful of AI-fueled advances in materials discovery during the next decade or two. Possibly enough to unlock laser fusion, or something that could be crammed onto a spac…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen. Back of the envelope math - 4.2 light years to the nearest star that's not the sun, current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager (e.g. 1 light day in 5 years). If something was launched today it would get to the nearest star system in about 7,660 years (assuming that star system also a radius of 1 light day). 100x faster than current (1…
Just spitballing, but maybe it would be possible with relatively modest advances in ion thrusters, and one (admittedly less-than-modest) breakthrough with fusion. It's maybe too speculative to even matter, but I don't think it's _crazy_ to imagine a handful of AI-fueled advances in materials discovery during the next decade or two. Possibly enough to unlock laser fusion, or something that could be crammed onto a spac…
There is no amount of money in the world that would get me on the ChatGPT rocket
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My intuition is that the extra mass for the receivers would be a large negative in terms of travel time (1/sqrt(m) penalty assuming you can give each probe fixed kinetic energy). Plus keeping a probe as active part of a relay is a major power drain, since it will have to be active for a substantial percentage of the whole multi-decade journey and there's basically no accessible energy in interstellar space. Then agai…
Thoughtful intuitions all around. My understanding is that lasers don't necessitate the big reception dish, but instead have a 1m or smaller reflective telescope. The laser setup is lighter, lower power and gas precedent in modern space missions. Probes I suspect would realistically have to be large enough to send strong signals over long distances, so weightier than a few grams. I think 99% downtime is an existing p…
The problem I see is that lasers are still subject to diffraction, and this is worse the smaller the aperture is relative to wavelength. Due to the small probe mass which you need to split with observation equipment, support systems and presumably some microscale nuclear power supply, you could maybe with a few breakthroughs in engineering manage a wispy affair on the order of a metre at most. It it scales with diameter and mass scales with diameter squared.
So the beam divergence of a visible light laser end with a diameter of over 18 million km over 4 light years. With 100W of transmission power, that's 0.1pW per square kilometer of receiver. Which isn't nothing, but it's not huge either.
I really don't see how the Starwisp type microprobes will actually work on a practical level at any time in the foreseeable future, even if the propulsion works. Not only is the communications a problem, but so is power, computational resources, observation equipment, radiation shielding and everything in between. But anything massier than that requires mindboggling amounts of fuel. And the problem is so much worse if you want to stop at the destination rather than scream past at a modest fraction of c and hope to snap a photo on the way past.
It really seems (sadly, in a way) that building gigantic telescopes will be a lot more instructive than any plausible probe for quite some time. An gravitational lens telescope would be a far better, and probably almost as challenging, project for learning about exoplanets. Not least it would be about 3 times further from Earth than Voyagers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. Voyager is probably considered by many to be one of our greatest achievements. It makes me wonder when we'll have anything set foot in another star system. I would guess realistically after 2100, but then we went from the Wright brothers to landing on the moon in under 70 years... so I may be proven wrong.
Space is so ridiculously big that I don't think it will ever happen. Back of the envelope math - 4.2 light years to the nearest star that's not the sun, current vehicles traveling about 10x the speed of voyager (e.g. 1 light day in 5 years). If something was launched today it would get to the nearest star system in about 7,660 years (assuming that star system also a radius of 1 light day). 100x faster than current (1…
You'd ship embryos and caregiver robots, start breeding/raising people 30 years before you'd arrive.