a plan to explore Alpha Centauri announced by a russian billionere and Stephen Hawking a few days ago. the spaceship weights only few grams only, it has a camera and a sail with a thickness of a few atoms only. it will be launched from a satellite and then pushed by a laser beam from a base on the earth until it reaches the required speed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GL2G9nhinro short descr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5Qkr1JTTpk announcement
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/ ... tauri.html
http://www.88p4.com/2016/04/14/hawking- ... 44647.html
micro starship soon weights only a few grams
Re: micro starship soon weights only a few grams
oh cool! i'd heard of spacecraft using solar sails pushed by sun photons (sounded slow to me but i dont know), but that's a super cool idea using a LASER to accelerate them faster! (until you blind a commercial pilot of course lol)
Apparently still 20 years from their very first launch though... then 20-30 years to get to Alpha Centauri, then 4 years to notify Earth of successful arrival lol. I wonder how long it will take to outplace Voyager I as the most distant spacecraft?!?
Apparently still 20 years from their very first launch though... then 20-30 years to get to Alpha Centauri, then 4 years to notify Earth of successful arrival lol. I wonder how long it will take to outplace Voyager I as the most distant spacecraft?!?