Ships the size of butterflies? Ugh, I would hate to be the astronaut who would be chosen to pilot that thing... :crazy3:(CNN) -- Imagine hundreds of spacecraft the size of a butterfly, propelled by light beams at record-shattering speeds and journeying to distant stars 4.37 light years away -- far deeper into space than human-built probes have ever ventured.
Science is turning away from the Flash Gordon exploration of space. Robotics will do it as artificial intelligence will be more than sufficient to do all the things we dream of in space travel. Keep in mind it will be hundreds of years before we achieve real results in travel. Smoke spewing "rockets" manned by a professor, his daughter, a handsome captain and a stooge wearing a baseball cap with a wrench in his rear pocket is not the future. Voyager has been traveling since when and where is it in our solar system? Speed and miniaturization is the future.
Just thinking about this and it seems like a ridiculous premise
The problems with a Laser fired from a rotating Earth at a tiny craft wouldn't stop at the lasers obvious line of site limitations
They laser would have to reaquire the craft every day and would have a limited amount of time to push the sail before its line of sight was broken by the Earths rotation
Also light refracts as it passes through various atmospheric densities.
A infinitesimal error on Earth due to atsmopheric refraction would lead to a exponential error thousands of light years away and make hitting" tiny solar sail " literally impossible
No particular reason the laser has to be on the surface.
Parking it on a Satellite in geosynchronous orbit might solve the refraction issue but not the line of site issue.
Personally I think NASA has a better idea.....
NASA - Ion Propulsion | NASA
I think Alpha Centauri is far enough off our oribtal plane to not have a line of sight problem
Huh ?
Where on a orbiting sphere would we need to place that laser so as to maintain a line of sight with a spacecraft heading towards Alpha Centauri ?
Science is turning away from the Flash Gordon exploration of space. Robotics will do it as artificial intelligence will be more than sufficient to do all the things we dream of in space travel. Keep in mind it will be hundreds of years before we achieve real results in travel. Smoke spewing "rockets" manned by a professor, his daughter, a handsome captain and a stooge wearing a baseball cap with a wrench in his rear pocket is not the future. Voyager has been traveling since when and where is it in our solar system? Speed and miniaturization is the future.
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