Prof Hawking to mail postage-stamp space craft to Alpha Centauri using frickin' lasers

star wars

It's actually the opposite: we can do that exactly because of laser weapons (http://spie.org/newsroom/technical-articles/4853-did-adaptive-optics-end-the-cold-war).

It looks like the star wars project might do some good in the end.

To be fair, most of the research is actually coming from astronomical observatories, given that the military technology is still secret.

They're aiming for a metre-wide sail and it's suggested the lasers will use adaptive optics. They admit they can't afford the lasers (about $1-trillion), that the array would be a handy ground based weapon, and that we have no material that can be used to build the sail. They even acknowledge there is no way for the probe to communicate back. The $100-million is to research these problems.

They don't mention that getting the probe to hit Alpha Centauri will be really tricky; small errors add up over a parsec. Nor do they talk about cosmic rays which will evaginate the unshielded silicon -- they're going to have to fire a lot of probes in the hope one gets there.

> It would of course also be quite useful as a ground based weapon...

A frickin' gigawatt laser would be nice to have when the Alpha Centaurians come looking for whoever shotgunned them with 1000 ludicrous-speed bullets.

They've been able to hit mirrors on the moon as part of the Lunar Ranging Experiment since the 60s, so there's no reason why not with today's technology.

Although quite how they'll steer it to allow for mid-flight course correction I have no idea.

"It would of course also be quite useful as a ground based weapon..."

Russian billionaire?

Does he have a private island by any chance?

With a dormant volcano on it?

Re: More information for those interested

100GW - that's a lot of power! You're not going to get that for 100million.

The cost of the lasers may drop but you are going to have to build 30 Hinkley C's at 18 billion a piece and rising.

Re: Lasers on earth?

"Surely they should be mounted on the moon, around the edge and in the centre of a huge circular crater."

This makes sense to me. However. given the vast expense of such an exercise, there's clearly no budget for such niceties as safety rails

Re: No return

That's one of the "future problems" they hope someone will solve.

Personally, I reckon you're looking at a wide area telescope to receive (SETI in spaaaace), and then hope that you can synchronise the fleet to take advantage of constructive interference

Re: No return

In Robert Forward's original 1980s-vintage "StarWisp" proposal (which was for a maser-driven sail), the probe would include actuators in the sail. When the probe was due to pass through the target system, the driving lasers would flood that system with laser light. The sail would return data by using the actuators to modulate the reflected light.

Re: No return

Easy, they just reverse the polarity of the lasers and suck it back to Earth. Haven't you ever seen a single Star Trek episode?

Re: No return

they just need to include a note:

"Greetings,

"Peace and Prosperity to you and all your fellow Centaurian beings. I am Mr Amatee Mbogo, Finance Minister for a small nation-state on planet Sol 3 (which we call Earth) and am in possession of 274 bazillion Centaurian dollars. Please send a small finder's fee of 500 Centaurian dollars to the following space-time coordinates and a generous share of the fortune will be sent straight away."

Re: Isn't it pointless

By the time it gets there, we'll have developed FTL travel and will be waiting for it, with flags waving and a band playing.

Re: Isn't it pointless

It will have a usb stick. They hope the aliens will plug it in their pc when it gets there.

Re: Mot(i)e - sized probes?

Nah, Motie sailprobes are Apollo-sized.