This looks intriguing... Researchers unlock the keys to designing an interstellar sail Breakthrough Starshot is a project with the Breakthrough Initiatives, which are "a suite of space science programs investigating the fundamental questions of life in the universe," according to the program's website. Breakthrough Starshot aims to develop a light sail that would carry a microchip-sized probe at 20% the speed of light. This high-speed pace would see the probe reachAlpha Centauri In just about 20 years, according to a statement. For reference, Alpha Centauri is about 4 light-years away from Earth, and some experts estimate it would take at least 6,300 years to reach the system with existing technology. Sending a lot of microchip sized probes that can get there in 20 years makes more sense to me than one big one that would take thousands of years.
An interstellar sale?!?! Gaseous Nebula - Half Off!!! The concept has been around for a long time. No great leap of technology here. But it would be cool if someone finally did it! Who invented the solar sail? When was the solar sail invented? Solar sailing is a concept with a long history, dating all the way back to an idea Johannes Kepler shared with his friend Galileo Galilei in 1608. https://www.planetary.org/articles/what-is-solar-sailing In 1984, Robert L. Forward proposed that an interstellar light sail craft could be propelled by a powerful laser in the vicinity of Earth. A giant Fresnel lens, 620 miles (1,000 km) across, would be required to focus the laser light. https://www.space.com/22799-interst...t=In 1984, Robert L.,to focus the laser light.
There's a lot going on in this area. Lowering the Laser Barrier by PAUL GILSTER on MARCH 1, 2022 The continuing release of papers related to or referring to the Breakthrough Starshot sail concept is good news for the entire field. Interstellar studies as an academic discipline has never had this long or sustained a period of activity, and the growing number of speakers at space-related conferences attests to the current vitality of starflight among professionals and the general public alike. Not all interstellar propulsion concepts involve laser-beaming, of course, and we’ll soon look at what some would consider an ever more exotic concept. But today I’m focusing on a paper from Ho-Ting Tung and Artur Davoyan, both in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UCLA. You could say that these two researchers are filling in some much needed space between the full-bore interstellar effort of Breakthrough Starshot, the Solar System-oriented laser work of Andrew Higgins’ team at McGill, and much smaller, near-term experiments we could run not so far from now. Of the many potential show-stoppers faced by a mission to another star at our stage of development is the need to develop the colossal laser array envisioned by Starshot. The Higgins array is at a smaller scale, as befits a concept with nearby targets like Mars. What Tung and Davoyan envision are tiny payloads (here they parallel Breakthrough), some no more than a gram in mass, but the authors push the sail with a 100 kW array about a meter in size. Compare this with Breakthrough’s need for a gigantic square-kilometer array of 10 kW lasers with a combined output of up to 100 GW. . . .
Got my doubts about sails in Space... But as long as we are going out on a proverbial limb, this is what I would like to do. Build a couple Hubble telescopes (one in reserve), and shoot them towards the center of the galaxy, but starting with a close pass by of the Alpha Centauri system. It would need to start in orbit, with several large boosters, and some sort of ion propulsion system for the long run. It would also be headed slightly up out of the plane of the elliptic, to get a better view, in a century, or so. It's not good bang for buck, but it would give us a close up view of Alpha Centauri, and the ability to send a number of instruments into the system itself.
I've never liked the laser sail idea for probe navigation. I know it's a vast improvement over other proportion methods in technology and speed, but I feel like no one thought about what happens at the end of its journey. That is: how does it slow down and stop? I think this thing should be called "passing through" the Alpha Centauri system in 20 years vs arriving at AC. Because it will pass in one side and out the other.
But, I don't want to be a downer. Send these probes there for what it's worth. We might get a few photos through the flyby.
To improve the view from a telescope by moving toward the object being viewed would require moving some noticeable percent of the distance toward that object. We don't really have the capability of sending an object like Hubble a meaningful percent closer to the objects that telescope was created to view. As for moving outside the galactic disk to get better views, one has to remember that the thickness of the disk is something like 2,000 light years.
