Breakthrough Starshot Initiative *Live Feed HAS ENDED*

[AngelLestat]

My way is slower, it require 60 or 50 years to reach alpha centauri, maybe with the help of an extra laser and a mag sail mechanism could do it 30 years.. But it would be much cheaper with an increase error margin than this..
My type of sails could transmit over much higher distances and stay all the time they want in the system studying planets.
But these sails would be more complex so it would require extra development time. 

8 hours ago, Shpaget said:

I don't see how a "gram scale" probe (whatever that means) can be capable of transmitting a signal powerful enough for our ground stations to interpret, from light years away.

I'd also like to see their concept for attitude control. 

Because they relay the communication between different probes, you launch one by day, each probe travels at 20% the speed of light, this is enough to reach neptune in 1 day, so these probes should be able to transmit  and relay over 5 times the neptune distance (minimum safety margin), is still hard over these scales, but well.. possible.
You need to sent 7300 to relay the first probe transmision, then keep sending to continue exploration.
I am sure that the transmission method would be laser.
In this sence, I believe that my probe solar sail idea is way better, cheaper and with extra margin to fails.  

4 hours ago, p1t1o said:

You rang? Sorry Im late, busy day...

Another interstellar project that requires a super-weapon to be built, not going to hold my breath.

The energy is not much considering that we are talking of 20% the speed of light.

13 minutes ago, Darnok said:

So if we would build Moon base with huge laser and target someone on Earth we could kill her/him?

Would it be possible to destroy or damage car (Tesla), planes, rockets, missiles and satellites from Earth or Moon orbit, with such strong laser and so precise targeting system?

EDIT: disabling power grid for cities from orbit would be possible?

You can build the laser in the dark side of the moon to prevent that.

[Darnok]

9 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

You can build the laser in the dark side of the moon to prevent that.

Prevent what?

[AngelLestat]

5 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Prevent what?

You want to use the laser as a weapon?  of course you can use it as a weapon, even from earth using mirrors in space.

But the main idea here is how to build a potential weapon without put in risk to others, in case is taken by terrorist or controlled by one country and a crazy president.
Earth surface can be safe if nobody launch a big mirror, the other is build this in the dark side of the moon, and you dont need to deal with atmosphere.

Edited April 13, 2016 by AngelLestat

[p1t1o]

9 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

The energy is not much considering that we are talking of 20% the speed of light.

I assume what you meant to type was: 

"Considering we are talking of 20% the speed of light, its going to be a lot of energy."

 

10 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

You can build the laser in the dark side of the moon to prevent that.

Sure! Easy-Peasy! Hell, lets build ten!

This would actually prevent the array from being used as a weapon, but its is probably the least accessible place in the Earth/Moon system. Would be easier to build something at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. So I will continue to not hold my breath.

[Darnok]

12 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

You want to use the laser as a weapon?  of course you can use it as a weapon, even from earth using mirrors in space.

But the main idea here is how to build a potential weapon without put in risk to others, in case is taken by terrorist or controlled by one country and a crazy president.
Earth surface can be safe if nobody launch a big mirror, the other is build this in the dark side of the moon, and you dont need to deal with atmosphere.

Ok, but you can still build large mirror on Moon orbit and target Earth from dark side

My point was what is possible to damage or destroy using such strong laser. If everything I mentioned is possible, then nobody is going to stop US, Russia and China from building its own military bases on Moon and target rivals. Just like they do right now with nukes.

[Darnok]

19 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Sure! Easy-Peasy! Hell, lets build ten!

This would actually prevent the array from being used as a weapon, but its is probably the least accessible place in the Earth/Moon system. Would be easier to build something at the bottom of the Mariana Trench. So I will continue to not hold my breath.

Building Moon base would cost more than US nuclear missile launch facilities? If lasers can make huge damage on our infrastructure then I am sure that laser-bases would replace nukes for next ~50 years.

[AngelLestat]

23 minutes ago, Darnok said:

then nobody is going to stop US, Russia and China from building its own military bases on Moon and target rivals.

They cant due the Outer Space Treaty, also nobody will allow you (from the public media perspective).
If these laser array are build, it will need a huge international consensus, maybe they need to be build in neutral ground.
But one advantage of this as is mentioned in the video, that can also work as asteroid defense if they use a fresnel lense in orbit.
If they select very well the laser frequency it can cross the atmosphere without much interaction.

Edited April 13, 2016 by AngelLestat

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, Darnok said:

Building Moon base would cost more than US nuclear missile launch facilities? If lasers can make huge damage on our infrastructure then I am sure that laser-bases would replace nukes for next ~50 years.

Are you seriously suggesting building a military lunar base for defence applications on earth? This idea has been discredited for decades due to the (rather obvious) limitation of it being very, very far away. It is literally the worst place in the Earth-Moon system to put a military base. (On top of that lasers make poor long-range weapons)

Also, a base on the Far side of the moon was being discussed - pretty hard to hit the earth from there. Mirrors will just attenuate the beam further than it already will on the 300,000km journey to target.

I assume this is why the probes in the OP are accelerated so hard - because if you don't they quickly end up too far away to receive much energy from your laser.

[Darnok]

18 minutes ago, AngelLestat said:

They cant due the Outer Space Treaty, also nobody will allow you (from the public media perspective).
If these laser array are build, it will need a huge international consensus, maybe they need to be build in neutral ground, like the antartika or something like that..
But one advantage of this as is mentioned in the video, that can also work as asteroid defense if they use a fresnel lense in orbit.
If they select very well the laser frequency it can cross the atmosphere without much interaction.

Haha right because everyone needed approval to start working on nukes

I like idea of asteroid defence system, this can be better usage for such strong lasers than Hawking idea.

 

14 minutes ago, p1t1o said:

Are you seriously suggesting building a military lunar base for defence applications on earth? This idea has been discredited for decades due to the (rather obvious) limitation of it being very, very far away. It is literally the worst place in the Earth-Moon system to put a military base. (On top of that lasers make poor long-range weapons)

Also, a base on the Far side of the moon was being discussed - pretty hard to hit the earth from there. Mirrors will just attenuate the beam further than it already will on the 300,000km journey to target.

I assume this is why the probes in the OP are accelerated so hard - because if you don't they quickly end up too far away to receive much energy from your laser.

It is literally best place to put military base, since it can't be observed directly from Earth, so if you are first you can target and destroy rival rockets, probes or spy satellites before they even find your base. And they can't even announce that you destroyed their property in TV, since its military secret

---

As for main topic... we shouldn't send anything outside of solar system, because we don't know what rules and laws can have alien civilizations, maybe they obey basic laws of nature and act like predators, where stronger and more advanced are higher in "food chain".

 

Edited April 13, 2016 by Darnok

[p1t1o]

1 minute ago, Darnok said:

It is literally best place to put military base, since it can't be observed directly from Earth, so if you are first you can target and destroy rival rockets, probes or spy satellites before they even find your base. And they can't even announce that you destroyed their property in TV, since its military secret

It is the worst place for exactly those reasons.

Past experience is telling me to bow out now. Plus, I'm off home

[PB666]

2 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Prevent what?

The dark side of the moon is not dark, because the moon is tidally locked, the distal surfaces are always distal relative to Earths surface, you could build a laser on these surfaces and accelerate an object from the surface of the moon using lasers.

To do this you would have to have the capacity to generation 100 gigawatts of power in say the 15 days in which the moon faces the sun and store it.

That creates three problems in addition to the Earth problem (4)

1. You would have to have be able to the capacity to generate 141 Gigawatts at peak insolance/15 days. Assuming storage at 90% efficiency
that is roughly 10 GW per day, divided by 86130 seconds is 115 kw of power generation. That is roughly 400 meter ^ 2 of solar panels.

2. The battery capacity of a lithium ion battery is 900000j/kg and so if we take this as weight it about 110,000kg of lithium ion battery. Since this firing would likely be at the end of that lunar surfaces daylight cycle, the batteries could just passively dissipate the heat they generate in a full discharge, however it limits the size of the batteries to thin wafers, and this causes a problem during the full day cycle because of heat, they could be placed however under the solar panels. BTW you are not likely to get all 900000 in 100 seconds of operation, so that the battery should be considerably larger, say 3 or 4 times larger that its maximum capacity. 

3. Since the craft would naturally launch from the moon (or meters above the surface) it would be influenced by gravity, whereas the Earth orbit launch would be at GSO, or close to it. The presumption here is that you could have an inclined orbit in which the craft is directly about Earth bound lasers, so when fired travel strait away from earth. Taking off from the lunar surface, the lasers would have to compensate for the ~1.5 m/s gravity of the moon some of which would be along the x and z axes. If the vessel is launched strait up, the effect of gravity would have negligible effect on course, but alpha-centauri does not pass over the moons equator, it would be in the southern hemisphere, which means that insolance is lower. The acceleration in the first few milliseconds would have the most profound effect. If we argue that once the satellite is 10 lunar radii above the moon that gravity is no longer consequential. If the radius is 1737000 km and 10 radii is 17.37E6 km then the distance traveled = 1/2 600,000 T^2  = 7.5 seconds. If the X-Z deflection is then say .707*1.5 then X-Z deflection is less than 49 meters. But to know for certain exactly how much you have to run the integral of the gravity versus time function. My guess it would be about 24 meters, over the total 100 second course it would be off by <1km. 

4. although devoid of atmosphere it still rotates at 0.00013' per second, and since the lasers would fire over 100 seconds means that they travel 0.013 degrees, much less than earth, but still represent an off delta target at endpoint of about 1500 km perpendicular to the motion of travel without tracking. In addition the moons gravity which can be compensated for by the craft will tend to also deflect the craft. Being at the physical lunar pole offers on major advantage, you could place all the lasers on a giant rotating disk that is support by superconducting magnets. The disk could be a carbon fiber and filled with lunar sand at the periphery, once spun the disk would maintain the angular velocity of the moon, thus this tracking problem all but disappears.

The conclusion here is that targeting from the moon is easier because

1. There is no atmospheric or particulate interference.
2. The change of surface angle relative to infinity is about 29 fold less, thus tracking will be more reliable.
3  While there would be an effect of surface gravity, it would be fractional relative to earths rotation.

The problem of the moon is landing 1000 tonnes of lithium Ion batteries and posting >400 meters of solar panels, and a few 1000 lasers.

Therefore the dark side of the moon is a valid option. Another valid option it the lunar pole, because putting the lithium ion batteries in a polar sink avoid the heating problem and optimizes cooling in the post launch period. The lunar poles could still target the earth, from the southern hemisphere there would not be many good targets on earth,
Mr. Evil Genius could target the Antarctic ice cap and an attempt to melt it. Would not do as much damage as a 1 PPM rise in CO2. No more damage can be done than the number of solar panels. However Mr. Genius could melt the canyon hold int the West antarctic glaciers, allowing the inflow of salt water that would accelerate the melting of Antarctic glaciers. This could result in flooding major cities like Shanghai, Bombay, New Orleans, Miami, parts of New York city, parts of London. But even at best it would take 25 years to happen. Under international control you could make sure the lasers are mounted in a canyon below the horizon, so that it could only target stuff well into the Southern Hemisphere but not Earth.  

[insert_name]

53 minutes ago, Darnok said:

Haha right because everyone needed approval to start working on nukes

I like idea of asteroid defence system, this can be better usage for such strong lasers than Hawking idea.

 

It is literally best place to put military base, since it can't be observed directly from Earth, so if you are first you can target and destroy rival rockets, probes or spy satellites before they even find your base. And they can't even announce that you destroyed their property in TV, since its military secret

---

As for main topic... we shouldn't send anything outside of solar system, because we don't know what rules and laws can have alien civilizations, maybe they obey basic laws of nature and act like predators, where stronger and more advanced are higher in "food chain".

 

literally best as opposed to figuratively, hypothetically or technically best?

also a laser on the far side could not fire bellow the tangent line relative to the moon's surface unless it was really high

what reason is there to dominate the far side of the moon, you cant fire at earth, and it has no resources that cant be obtained on the near side, and by the time we run out of stuff on the near side, we would have enough infrastructure to attack the base

Edited April 13, 2016 by insert_name

[Basto]

So when you guys are done discussing death rays and moon bases...

60,000 Gs seems pretty extreme for an electronic device. 

Plus the difficulty of orienting your probe to get pictures/sensor readings from an object while traveling at .2C. 

Plus your probe needing some sort of autonomy to decide what objects to actually look at. And then figuring out where earth is to transmit data back

There are a ton of things here that are nowhere near possible right now  

 

[PB666]

59 minutes ago, Basto said:

So when you guys are done discussing death rays and moon bases...

60,000 Gs seems pretty extreme for an electronic device. 

Plus the difficulty of orienting your probe to get pictures/sensor readings from an object while traveling at .2C. 

Plus your probe needing some sort of autonomy to decide what objects to actually look at. And then figuring out where earth is to transmit data back

There are a ton of things here that are nowhere near possible right now  

 

yes, already mentioned, problem for sail attachment to payload. Not only structural problems at that force target deviation of lasers results in direction changes with little chance to compensate. Theoretically they can test the payload in a ultracentrifuge, 60000 g at 100 seconds, easy to test, lots of materials survive you think might fial. you can test the tether by hanging a 60 kg load onto the tether or 60000 times what the payload weighs. 

[AngelLestat]

It is the same thing I wanted to explain to Freddino when he argued that electronics could not withstand the venus pressures (90 bar).
But solids are incompressible, it start to be a problem only if overseed 10000 bar (common electronics), and specialized electronics can withstand a lot more.

You only need to be carefull to apply the same force uniform, because damage only occur with difference of forces.
For example.. you can be pulled by a black hole, accelerate to speed of light in seconds, and nothing will happen if the acceleration is uniform.
To achieve this, I assume they will rotate these micro sails at huge speeds.

Edited April 13, 2016 by AngelLestat

[Xyphos]

this also seems like fiction. what are your thoughts?

 

[Spaceception]

2 minutes ago, Xyphos said:

this also seems like fiction. what are your thoughts?

 

Dude, this was on the first page of the sci/space forums too

 

[Bill Phil]

"Next" step...? We haven't taken a first! You could argue voyager. But that's not definite. We have no good idea of the exact size of the solar system.

[Xyphos]

sorry, I didn't see it .

also, I don't use livestream.

[PB666]

28 minutes ago, Spaceception said:

Dude, this was on the first page of the sci/space forums too

 

I hadn't seen the illustation..of course i caught the conferance while it was under way. 

[Shpaget]

Sending a probe every day?

So you need to accelerate to 0,2 c in less than a day. That requires acceleration of roughly 70g, which would not be a problem if you needed to do it briefly. Chemical rockets can do that, but we are talking about light sails! 

Edited April 14, 2016 by Shpaget

[PB666]

4 hours ago, Shpaget said:

Sending a probe every day?

So you need to accelerate to 0,2 c in less than a day. That requires acceleration of roughly 70g, which would not be a problem if you needed to do it briefly. Chemical rockets can do that, but we are talking about light sails! 

0.2c in 100 seconds, not a day. the G force is 60k that is 600 km/sec^2.

[PB666]

17 hours ago, AngelLestat said:

It is the same thing I wanted to explain to Freddino when he argued that electronics could not withstand the venus pressures (90 bar).
But solids are incompressible, it start to be a problem only if overseed 10000 bar (common electronics), and specialized electronics can withstand a lot more.

You only need to be carefull to apply the same force uniform, because damage only occur with difference of forces.
For example.. you can be pulled by a black hole, accelerate to speed of light in seconds, and nothing will happen if the acceleration is uniform.
To achieve this, I assume they will rotate these micro sails at huge speeds.

http://phys.org/news/2016-04-hot-problem-black-hole-firewalls.html

[monstah]

On 12/04/2016 at 3:05 PM, PB666 said:

Better idea, move ISS into super GSO orbit mount laser on ISS, expand the solar arrays when retired, fill the iside with lithium ion batteries, and fire on ships from point blank range using say 10,000 g instead of 60,000 g. Alternative move the ISS to L1, easier to get to from earth lower omega, more stable targeting. 

You're probably missing the point that they plan to zap each nanoprobe with 80 times as much power as it took the DeLorean to time-travel, for a few minutes.

[Robotengineer]

42 minutes ago, monstah said:

You're probably missing the point that they plan to zap each nanoprobe with 80 times as much power as it took the DeLorean to time-travel, for a few minutes.

And what does the amount of power it took a fictional time machine to time-travel have to do with anything?