This was one of the most heartwarming and inspiring of your recent videos. It doesn't over-sell anything or make wild claims, but it just makes me feel great to be Human and alive.
They should use something Megaprojects did a Vid about lol Hitler's Death Ray ;) take a note from history! Scale it down to a Lens Satellite using practically infinite energy from the Sun focusing on Solar Sails! Lol and when it's not busy launching Spacecraft it can also zap hostile Satellites and blame it on Solar flares jk kinda
He is skeptical in a good way, but everybody here believes too much how possible it is in the near future. Space is way bigger than most people realize: go outside on a starry night and see how many things you can see that are bigger than a point of light. It's almost all empty space, in huge quantities. He's good at explaining how utterly far away we are from getting anything to go anywhere near the speed of light. Take a Mach 10 jet - so fast, the biggest problem is the atmosphere in the way. Well, speed of light is 30,000 TIMES faster. Also there's a principle of engineering called Murphy's Law. It's like the small particles of dust it'll encounter - a big problem you might not realize until you started the sails flying. Except we haven't even started flying them and already there's almost insurmountable problems. If we got SoME of these sails launched and going fast, it would be good to see what more problems pop up. But we haven't launched a single one yet. Start with sailing one to the Moon. Then to some planet. Then, to Neptune or Pluto. We'll be lucky if we get that far in our lifetimes.
We may be old when the first prototypes come out and actually do something but our grandchildren (if the world stays in one piece ((CAN WE GET MUCH HIG-))) will see the wonders of cosmos more then we did!
I’ve always been fascinated with space mainly because we know so little about it. That’s insane though how far the closest galaxy is. 20 years doing a 1/5 the speed of light. The sheer number alone is astounding. Only thing that makes me sad is that the in my lifetime, we will never see the other side of the universe yet alone another galaxy in person. It a single person on this planet today will ever see another galaxy in person. I don’t see us advancing that much in only a 100 years unless we find a holy grail of knowledge. I seriously hope we do though. I would love to see the video footage of one of those little prides as it zips through space. That would be awesome.
Just when I thought the Whistlerverse was done with the bombardment of youtubes algorithms 😂 thanks for the content and hard work you guys at Simon and Co. put in for our entertainment 💯🍻👍
Personally, when I hear about light sails, I think of Arthur C. Clarke's "Sunjammer", basically a yacht race around the Earth and to the moon using solar sails (no lasers or anything, just sunlight).
Larry Niven's works come to mind for me, as it was his discussions and essays about light-sails that made them make sense. (Clarke's just a bit too dense for me I guess!) I do wonder if they have plans for things like deceleration at arrival. But also, when/why not lasers on the Moon? Maybe that's another aspect the Starshot people are keeping an eye on, because it seems like it would be a VERY helpful step forward. I'm sure Moon lasers would have a bunch of issues to overcome too, but certainly atmosphere wouldn't be one of them. The most concerning complication of all though is one Simon didn't mention. Politics. Because even though this kind of project stands to benefit all of humanity on so many levels it's literally impossible to count the ways that it could change the world for the better... someone's going to scream about every single tiny step along the way. This is no longer the 60s and the Space Race and the starry eyed wonder of Getting Out There, and it's a damn shame to think that some group of thick-headed bean counters might delay this amazing idea by even a few years.
My own thoughts generally go to Cordwainer Smith's "The Lady Who Sailed The _Soul_ " , though interestingly enough the use of a lightsail ship was only the denouement of what was really a character study. Another author who comes to mind is Larry Niven, and specifically the novel _A Gift from Earth_ , though again, the old lightsail ships (which once landed became the basis of The Hospital) were a piece of the setting, rather than part of the story itself.
Love this idea. Really hope this is launched within the next 10 yrs or so, but I do think another big issue they'll have to overcome is taking pictures going one fifth the speed of light.
If anyone is curious, PBS Space Time just put out a video about sending a light sail telescope launched and uses the sun for a gravity assistand sent far enough away to use the sun for a gravitational lense. And yes it's legit and he's a real astrophysicist.
They're "channels" all have the same "research " to battle over being the first UA-camer to come up with nothing original.......unless you're a typical merican 30 year old popping their head out of its fecal habit and realising they are in bread ya'll
You only just realised they're all trying to be the first to UA-cam stuff that's been UA-camd decades ago? I'm big vaginus , and no info is new research
Using the Sun for a gravitational lens would only allow us to see the things at that one specific angle of the exact opposite side of the Sun. If there is something interesting one degree to the left, it will not be seen.
many similar project has this issue, beaming back energy is possible, but the same tech that can send a few TW to a city sized dish for electricity can send it back to a skyscraper for a supervillain style doomsday weapon. the same lasers that can push a tiny spacecraft with 20% of c can be aimed at any other thing to devastate it.
@@thorin1045 That is my point. A system's efficiency as a drive is directly proportional to its effectiveness as a weapon. In theory, the most efficient drive possible would use fusion power to eject a particle stream at as near light speed as possible. That is also a particle beam weapon. Something to think about.
@@thorin1045 In fact, a major problem with all of these schemes to generate microwave energy in orbit, or on the ground, and beam it up or down, is, what happens when a jetliner flies thru it by accident? In fact, same problem with these super lasers - heaven forbid a bird or a personal jet flies in front.
@@portfolio91 all depends on the energy density and the used frequency. good combination, and the jet or even the bird will not even notice it, while the energy still comes down (you just need stupid sized dish), but nothing will prevent the source to change it into a less then nice combination. Also, no fly zones exist for many reasons, most jetliners accept the fact, that the high voltage power lines are not for them, and the birds either can live with it or the fry. in a few year they will learn, or not.
15:00 that would mean sending a probe every week for 20 years and then a further 3.7 years allowing for Lightspeed data transmission and then you add on the time you would like to continue the study. To keep the information coming you must keep launching data chips indefinitely and if more than 2 or 3 in a row fail for some reason the entire chain could fail. So you need to send hundreds every week for 40 years to get 15 years worth of data. Not only that. You know need every chip to not only be a transmitter of data it also needs to be a receiver.
It's actually worse than that, since the size of the receiving antenna can be so much larger on earth vs the size possible one each probe (not to mention how do you power it...) means that the maximum distance between each probe in the pipeline is vastly smaller distance (it's not linear, it's a square relationship). This means the number of points of failure in a series is absurd, even IF you could meet the power requirements. Getting the probes physically there is "technically challenging" but plausible, getting a useable signal back by either method is as much hand-wavium as FTL travel.
Oh yeah, where'll each sail get the electricity to retransmit a signal? There ain't no sun out there. Our space probes, that go past Jupiter, need a radioactive chunk of Pu-238 to keep them warm and generate electricity. And, it's WAY COLD out there. A few degrees kelvin. Think of pluto and how its rocks are made of solid Methane and rivers of liquid Nitrogen.
Simon, love all your channels. I just ordered beard oil from Beard Blaze. I absolutely love your products. I ordered a sample pack first and found the oil for me. If you have a beard and love it, try Beard Blaze!
Great video and your passion shines through such a great channel oh channels as I’m on three of yours already love the content always a great story well researched and great narration thanks to all those involved
Quote from NASA: "Even though Voyager 1 travels about a million miles per day, the spacecraft will take about 300 years to reach the inner boundary of the Oort Cloud and probably another 30,000 years to exit the far side."
The easiest way of dealing with collisions along the way is to jettison the sails. Make the craft slowly spin and when it reaches its final speed, it releases its sails. They would be flung outward, away from the craft. Being very small, the craft would not have many collisions for the rest of its journey.
Just imagine 50-100 years from now, we'll be sending thousands of these things to all the stars in the Local Group and after they take their pictures for their primary mission, their secondary mission begins, being interstellar trail cams. Programmed to just sit and do nothing unless something notices them and decided to take a closer look, it takes the pictures and sends back our first look at an alien.
Starshot will start destroying Voyager spacecrafts by February 2028 at 1.32355 AU an hour. By July 12, 2078, 5 minutes before 5:00 PM, all mankind will end up being brutally extinct by the extraterrestrial beings 10 times stronger than us.
The nearest star is more than 4 light years away. Going at 1/5 the speed of light you figure out how long it will take to arrive, send a pic and for us to receive it. The nearest possibly habitual planets are thousands of light years away.
@@BrjanBuckmasterGoing 1/5 of light speed would only take 20 years to reach nearest star, thats nothing. If that would be possible we would allready be sending probes. There are about 2000 stars within 50 light-years away from our sun. Possibly 10% could have planets at earth like distance from their star.
I'd like to see a swarm of these shot at a black hole or maybe a neutron star! How cool would it be to do real science up close and personal on those things?! Great video, Mega projects Crew!
As the moon is tidal locked to the earth, no matter where on the moon you build it, some days weeks or months during the year will be unable to target. Not that I know exactly where AC is in the night sky and the limitations of optimizing the time it is in view.
@@torgrimhanssen5100 Still the Moon might be the best place to build it. I'm talking about a much larger laser array field that can propel not just starshot, but larger spacecraft for going to Mars and Europa. Perhaps even a hybrid laser/nuclear propelled spacecraft. I've heard project Orion's nuke detonating ship can go up to 4% the speed of light. Say u use a laser propelled sail to make it go half that speed then use the nuclear propulsion to reach 5% the speed of light then slow down using the last amounts of nuclear bomb fuel, it could reach Alpha Centauri in 88 years. The Moon has no atmosphere to interfere with the lasers and there's helium 3 there so if nuclear fusion becomes available, it can be used to provide enough power for those laser arrays. I can see why NASA really wants to go back to the Moon now with Artemis.
@@hellothere1656 relativistic speeds for travel within our system would require lethal acceleration and deceleration. You would kill your astronauts trying to send them to mars at 4% of c.
The fact that when I was born there were no known exo-planets in the early 1990s and now we know close to every star has it’s own solar system blows my mind. We can tell the composition of these solar systems, with many wildly different to our own with gas giants within the inner solar system. Not only that but we can start to see the light spectrum from the thin sliver of light around the planet as it passes in front of it’s star, thereby analysing the makeup of it’s atmosphere. We may find life supporting worlds elsewhere, or at least very good candidates within the next decade. If we have gone from no known exo-planets to countless planets orbiting most stars in 30 years, what will we know another 30 years from now?
Truly outstanding! 😮 We briefly saw Light Sails in Star Wars, Makes sense when you think about it though RIP Stephen Hawking 😔 You were A true Successor to Einstein and Newton!
Light sails were also mentioned in Star Trek IV & there was an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine where Sisko takes his son out on an adventure in space on a space sail ship. Interesting concept for sure.
One advantage to a continuous swarm is that one doesn't have to wait for the "best possible" technology, we can start sending them as soon as it is physically possible with basic functionality in the probe we could achieve now. We don't even have to have every probe contain every function. Think of them as a collective or as a squad of specialists. One probe in a squad has the visible light 20k camera, another probe has the IR camera, yet another has LIDAR telemetry, the responsibilities of the probes can be distributed to reduce the individual mass of each probe. The only thing that all of them have to be capable of is networked intelligence and relay communication. Even then, there could be a communications specialist for each squad who's responsibility is to collect local weaker signals from specialised telemetry probes and begin the relay process. This could also be a "squad leader" who also acts as a network intelligence hub, unless that also needs to be distributed to it's own drone for mass considerations. As for what happens when the last probe sent is out of range, we could just not stop sending probes, albeit the continuous ones could just be communication relays. Or, a heavier probe could be sent now with existing technology for the express purpose of being a legacy communications relay by the time it reaches the outer system it would be within range of the last wave of probes.
Thank you for your video on this. It truly is mind blowing what Starshot could achieve. And forget just Alpha Centauri, there are many stars that these probes could reach at 20% of lightspeed in less than half a century. Sirius, Ross 248, 61 Cygni, Barnard's Star, Tau Ceti, etc.
Also another issue would be pointing accuracy with respect to navigation and pointing accuracy for radio/laser communications. And the effect of radiation pressure on the sails throughout the journey, they would have to simulate the trajectory, calculate the degree of radiation and the vector it would be coming and change the trajectory accordingly on launch, like how a plane deflects left or right if there's a severe crosswind on a landing.
I always love how these things are based on something that hasn’t been invented yet. There used to be a cartoon that had a calculation and tucked in to it was “then a miracle happens”
They're still useful projects as a way to direct research towards "these are the problems we need to solve". Turning something into a known unknown from an unknown unknown has value in itself. Where they're less useful is when those problems remain stubbornly unsolved despite decades of research and that money could have gone into blue sky research that might have found a different solution without those problems. *cough* fusion power *cough*
Thanks for video, so many hidden issues remain to design such a mission. One problem you didn't mentioned is the deacceleration of the probes. When they reach their destination nearby Proxima A or B they must deaccelerate immediately. Otherwise they will sustain the high velocity and the surveillance window will take place only for a few hours or a day.
I guess my only “science concern” is: how do you keep momentum towards the end of the journey? At some point Centari A, B and Proxima would be impacting the probe from the opposite direction. But, this episode definitely hit the kid inside that always wants to be a part of every one of these endeavors. 🙂 Thank you for putting this one together.
"how do you keep momentum towards the end of the journey?" Momentum keeps itself. No friction. They'll be flying past the 3 Alpha Centauri stars at c/5.
I love the energy of the first few seconds , you should totally do a skit and do max energy and director keeps cuttin and saying again till you're pourin sweat andout of breath and still tryin to deliver the same monologue. Would be fun
Imagine being on the receiving end of this mass swarm of starships 😂 If there’s life out there, they’re about to see a convoy of probes, and I love that concept.
Now, I want to ask a question and shift the perspective. If a civilization elsewhere in the galaxy launched a mission like Starshot at our system, could we notice it?
At 4 grams each, very tiny, extremely directionally reflective, and directed at the Sun in a way that may not pass any closer to Earth then Mars, it is nearly impossible to detect such objects. NASA is already having a hard time detecting objects many orders of magnitude larger for the purpose of cataloging impact threats to the planet, and is mainly just focusing on objects large bough to threaten cities.
@@clayongunzelle9555 in the one in a million chance of catching a glimpse of a stray reflection off one of the probes, that data would never imply a computer chip is integrated into it and would likely get filed away as another one of many weirdly shaped tiny objects passing through our solar system every day
Simon: that depends on investing in future technologies today I just read a corporate email from my employer (an international technology manufacturer) that was celebrating the top internal patent applicants within the organization. It occurred to me that this is how companies are positioning themselves for the future. Then Simon said “duh”
Wouldn't the problem be if you tried to go to another star, that once you get towards it you either: 1) fly past super fast, or 2) that star's force slows it down and it deflects it off in another direction?
That’s only a problem if you want to orbit the star to collect long-term data; if you just want to snap some pictures, you can do that as you zip past, with hundreds of probes in succession sending one or two photos each. You will know exactly where the probes are by calculating speed and trajectory, and therefor know exactly the best point/time for taking the photo. Being cheap, they only need to send an image or two to provide an equivalent value to much more expensive probes.
Wow !! This was a great one !! The kids and future generations have a shot at inspirational greatness. Let's hope none of this comes down to weaponizing to create funding. Humans should beware of ourselves for our own sake. -Ted
Problem that first comes to my mind is the space radiation messing with the computer memory - a loose particle hitting a right spot can change a bit in the memory from 0 to 1, which can either mean nothing at all or a critical system failure. It’s literally the reason why all probe CPUs are so big compared to regular user CPUs, to minimise effect of high speed particle impacts… so I don’t know how that would play into the miniaturisation of electronics.
Things like this are why I want to live forever. I want to see how far we go. Do we spread across the universe like a plague of locusts? Do we fizzle out here on our little ball of mud? Do we get enslaved by advanced intergalactic incects? These are things that I (and I'm sure Simon) want to know.
Collecting data might not be easy, but they probably can do it. Getting that data back to Earth seems impossible. If they tried to do it directly, they'd need tremendous power which I suspect won't be available. If it was a relay situation, they'd still need a lot of power, probably even more, as each link has to process signals from every vehicle ahead of it.
Maintaining aim isn’t as much of an issue, as the laser is pulsed for a very short duration. It can be reaimed between pulses in the very narrow period each day that the rotation of the planet provides a reasonably straight path through our atmosphere.
there are sooo many technical hurdles in this sort of scheme that the laser power and size of transmitter are low priorities (imho, etc). Getting a laser beam to not diverge a lot over such distance is a huge challenge all by itself, not to mention keeping it pointed within a few arc-minutes (or arc-seconds?). I was more struck by the problem of getting a tiny transmitter with almost no power to send a signal back to another tiny object that may be hundreds of thousands of miles away, especially when there's no way to aim the antennas. This is clearly a problem that will take quite a while to even figure out if solutions exist.
@@Cloud30000 Agreed however you still need the infrastructure and the power on demand whether it is a pulse or a long duration shot. Rather see the money spent on an Alcubierre drive
@@jacqueshuot6288 if we are talking purely theoretical technology, I’d rather the money be spent on Matter-Antimatter reactors, quantum singularity reactors, and cold fusion; at least those would benefit my own vehicles. However, we are much more likely to develop the tech to build a laser to propel micro-satellites within the next decade then we are to get warp drive within the next century.
When talking about the things it will encounter in space, it is important to remember that EVERYTHING is in space. Being stuck here sometimes gives a very planetary mindset.
The odds of an impact are nearly zero? Story time. Back in the 80s, in my "Mostly Peaceful" home town, a threeway gunfight occured. None of the belligerents hit each other, but two of the men were killed by gunshot wounds. The bullets that killed them came from a completely different gunfight almost a mile away. No one else was injured, including the participants of the other gunfight. This story contains many morals, such as, Don't go to Fayetteville NC. Don't fire guns blindly, please aim. And nearly zero IS NOT ZERO. Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.
1:25 - Chapter 1 - Touching from a distance 4:25 - Chapter 2 - Golden wind 8:55 - Chapter 3 - The starshot 13:35 - Chapter 4 - I think it's gonna be a long, long time 17:50 - Chapter 5 - The road to nowhere - Chapter 6 -
Here at Vault-Tec, we have been experimenting with this technology. Unfortunately, one of our scientists absconded with our design plans and sold them to George Lucas and ILM and we saw them put to fruition in his film, “The Phantom Menace” for the person ship of one Count Dooku.
The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.The key to financial freedom and great wealth is a person's ability to convert earned income into passive and/or portfolio income."
I would absolutely love for Simon to do a mega projects video on memes. Strange? Yes. Popular? Yes. A mega project that connects countless people and is arguably one of the most popular ways of communicating various emotions and views? Absolutely yes.
11:25 Moore's Law is mostly dead at this point, sadly. Even Intel conceded defeat after 14nm was hit and got stuck on in 2015. Now it takes 2-3 times longer than before to double transistor counts per sqmm and that will only get even slower over time and eventually hit a wall at around 1nm, with the big assumption the light wavelength limit isn't hit before that since using e-beams isn't at all economical enough for a mass manufacturing method (1 trillion per sqmm without 3D stacking, which is around 50 years away from commercial manufacturing and require carbon nanotubes replacing copper wires among other leaps of tech). And that's no where near it's only problem. Sometimes the laws of physics sucks. Pretty sure this pipe dream project is just another thing that will always be right around the corner or in the next 10-20 years that never actually happens. To me it's doubtful humans will ever send anything beyond the Oort cloud before they extinct themselves.
Moore's law may need an adjustment but the scaling of feature sizes on the chip is only one method to increase transistor density, and transistor density is only one way to improve processor speed, and improving processor speed is only one way to increase processing power. You'll find that the processors will continue to use less energy, reduced manufacturing costs, achieve higher clock speeds, and have higher transistor density. I wouldn't say you need carbon nanotubes for 3D. That's just a fiction perpetuated by the CNT fan club. All these four possibilities directly convert to increases in processing power per dollar. You're correct it won't be at Moore's law anymore, advanced litho was the low hanging fruit so to speak. But the limit is not reached by minimum litho size. A transformation in technology in any of these four areas could reignite Moore's law. And withthe future of integrated analog circuits and quantum computing, or other as yet conceived architectures who knows how far we'll go?
It takes a huge amount of power to decelerate the probe once it reaches the destination. If not, you just zip by. I don't think Starshot intends to even try deceleration.
I wonder if you could use the clockwork radio principle to power a probe that won’t be needed to be activated for decades, or possibly even longer. Like a probe sent to Alpha Centauri perhaps, with Solar Radiometers on the probe to both activate the probe as it nears the Solar system its aimed towards, and recharge the clockwork mechanism like a giant self rewinding watch that never stops running. The electronics would have to be powered like a clockwork radio, negating the need for batteries or Nuclear power, which will degrade over extremely long periods. This is the issue with the voyager probes as they age, despite the fact that the electronics and computers within the probe are functioning perfectly after nearly half a century of constant use. The probe would have to be large and capable of making independent decisions, which may require a large amount of older hardier computer chips. You could even go a step further, and have small landers on the larger probe that could be fired and directed towards other planets. They could be hardy probes, with a self contained non rechargeable clockwork power source of their own. Preferably a hardy probe to gather planetary data quickly, similar to the Venetian and Titan probes of the past. The only issue would be having a secondary rechargeable clockwork mechanism to power the transmitter, which would have to be very powerful for the extremely long distances to earth. Storage of information until broadcast would be vital. If Spacex can reduce the cost of launches further, perhaps we could have a mother ship probe that could launch smaller satellites like a Clockwork Cassinis, to examine planetary systems and their moons, as well as launch the aforementioned smaller probes. This is a bit long winded and hypothetical but its worth thinking about
Rocheworld was first published as Flight of the Dragonfly, that's the edition I have, it has a technical report at the end describing the solar sail mission and how you can make it a return trip as well.
20, or even 40 years from now.... Simon will be gray. (and probably bald). And this may be one of the most important videos ever done. I'm proud I was here at the beginning. Ill be gone, but I love that my future littles... (all of them) will know that. Thanks Simon. This may be more monumental than even you may know. Or any of us.... for now.
So as soon as you mentioned the phrase 'light sail', I get an advert pop up for 'the ulitmate high performance auxiliary LED driving lights'. Literally, a light sale.
Yes I heard about this, and I think you got everything covered. Communication back to earth clearly an issue. Also what will these micro probes use as a power source? Being so small, we can’t tag on a micro nuclear reactor. ….but as they would get there in around 20 years, the power needed will be far less than a regular probe like voyager which has taken decades to travel a fraction of the distance. In deep space or even at the edge of our solar system, solar panels won’t work. --- I agree we can benefit from the development of this tech in the near future…solar system probes using early versions of the technology. Able to reach the planets here way quicker, while testing out early laser power and early attempts of return communications and powering the system of the probes to achieve that. What we learn will help build the longer range tech, while we benefit from the earlier short range technology. It might pay for its self?
One issue not touched on.... These light sail probes will have no way to correct course, move directional cameras or antennas, nor have any way to slow down once they get to their destination. So, one traveling at 20% C will be traveling at 20% C past the objects it would be investigating and then onward forever until it smacks into something. It will be less a "probe" and more a very fast sensor and transmitter that will hopefully be pointing in the right direction for a few minutes at the right time.
This would be much better spent on mapping exoplanets. They would only have to get to a distance of 550-750AU. Check out the latest PBS SpaceTime for how these solar telescopes work. We could map the surface of quite distant exoplanets in very very high detail.
Light sails is one of the most magical, under-celebrated technologies in the world. It's the fastest spaceflight technology achievable using existing and near-future technology. A simple, ultra-thin sail that can accelerate way, WAY faster than any other existing technology, to a significant percentage of the speed of light, and can fly to another solar system within just 20 years, without carrying engines or propellant. Unbelievable !
Micro particles and even interstellar hydrogen gas is the reason that the ship in 'Project: Hail Mary" used a needle nose rocket. At those speeds, you DO have to account for such things.
One snag is that the faster the light sail travels, the longer the wavelength of the light pushing it along becomes, and the longer the wavelength the less the energy. Add to that the normal attenuation of a laser with distance, and it wont be long before the acceleration slows. Laser light spreads out much less than normal light, but it still spreads and attenuates. The journey would therefore take much longer than it would if the sail maintained its starting acceleration all the way to the target. The journey to Alpha centauri would take centuries.
This was one of the most heartwarming and inspiring of your recent videos. It doesn't over-sell anything or make wild claims, but it just makes me feel great to be Human and alive.
They should use something Megaprojects did a Vid about lol Hitler's Death Ray ;) take a note from history! Scale it down to a Lens Satellite using practically infinite energy from the Sun focusing on Solar Sails! Lol and when it's not busy launching Spacecraft it can also zap hostile Satellites and blame it on Solar flares jk kinda
He is skeptical in a good way, but everybody here believes too much how possible it is in the near future. Space is way bigger than most people realize: go outside on a starry night and see how many things you can see that are bigger than a point of light. It's almost all empty space, in huge quantities.
He's good at explaining how utterly far away we are from getting anything to go anywhere near the speed of light. Take a Mach 10 jet - so fast, the biggest problem is the atmosphere in the way. Well, speed of light is 30,000 TIMES faster.
Also there's a principle of engineering called Murphy's Law. It's like the small particles of dust it'll encounter - a big problem you might not realize until you started the sails flying. Except we haven't even started flying them and already there's almost insurmountable problems. If we got SoME of these sails launched and going fast, it would be good to see what more problems pop up. But we haven't launched a single one yet. Start with sailing one to the Moon. Then to some planet. Then, to Neptune or Pluto. We'll be lucky if we get that far in our lifetimes.
@jimbojimbo6873but it will matter for the future beyond us living currently
@@portfolio91hitler is scepitcal?
Wow! I really love the conclusion! Yes, this is what this is all about: Learning, advancing, improving.
I've never heard Simon do such a committed, even passionate ending before.
@@jeffk1482 Simon is a geek. He works on the various channels so he can expound upon these science not-quite-fiction topics that he dearly loves.
This is something I'd like to see happen in my lifetime.
Same. Been on top of my list for many yrs.
We may be old when the first prototypes come out and actually do something but our grandchildren (if the world stays in one piece ((CAN WE GET MUCH HIG-))) will see the wonders of cosmos more then we did!
I’ve always been fascinated with space mainly because we know so little about it. That’s insane though how far the closest galaxy is. 20 years doing a 1/5 the speed of light. The sheer number alone is astounding. Only thing that makes me sad is that the in my lifetime, we will never see the other side of the universe yet alone another galaxy in person. It a single person on this planet today will ever see another galaxy in person. I don’t see us advancing that much in only a 100 years unless we find a holy grail of knowledge. I seriously hope we do though. I would love to see the video footage of one of those little prides as it zips through space. That would be awesome.
@@JeremyDN
Star system, not galaxy. Alpha Centauri
Why wouldn't the laser be built on the moon?
Just when I thought the Whistlerverse was done with the bombardment of youtubes algorithms 😂 thanks for the content and hard work you guys at Simon and Co. put in for our entertainment 💯🍻👍
All Hail the Algorithm!
How does Simmons d taste?
@@RK-jc5ey like knowledge
Like hot dog flavored water
@@NightRogue77 HOT DIGGITY DOOGGG
Personally, when I hear about light sails, I think of Arthur C. Clarke's "Sunjammer", basically a yacht race around the Earth and to the moon using solar sails (no lasers or anything, just sunlight).
Larry Niven's works come to mind for me, as it was his discussions and essays about light-sails that made them make sense. (Clarke's just a bit too dense for me I guess!)
I do wonder if they have plans for things like deceleration at arrival. But also, when/why not lasers on the Moon? Maybe that's another aspect the Starshot people are keeping an eye on, because it seems like it would be a VERY helpful step forward. I'm sure Moon lasers would have a bunch of issues to overcome too, but certainly atmosphere wouldn't be one of them.
The most concerning complication of all though is one Simon didn't mention.
Politics.
Because even though this kind of project stands to benefit all of humanity on so many levels it's literally impossible to count the ways that it could change the world for the better... someone's going to scream about every single tiny step along the way. This is no longer the 60s and the Space Race and the starry eyed wonder of Getting Out There, and it's a damn shame to think that some group of thick-headed bean counters might delay this amazing idea by even a few years.
My own thoughts generally go to Cordwainer Smith's "The Lady Who Sailed The _Soul_ " , though interestingly enough the use of a lightsail ship was only the denouement of what was really a character study.
Another author who comes to mind is Larry Niven, and specifically the novel _A Gift from Earth_ , though again, the old lightsail ships (which once landed became the basis of The Hospital) were a piece of the setting, rather than part of the story itself.
That Clarke story is so good.
@@Beryllahawk The Mote in God's eye story was the one of his i remember that featured light sails.
Simon's beard is close to achieving sentience.
Look, I'm not saying there's an alien in there that's controlling Simon by pulling hairs...
@@RockyPeroxide but there is definitely life “out” there somewhere right? We are not alone, surely.
The line "... earths new insect overlords, or similar." got a chuckle out of me!
Your mention of Trisolaris overjoyed me so, as this was my first thought after seeing the thumbnail.
Yes I heard that 3 body problem reference too hahahaha at 3:07
I for one....welcome our insect overlords.
Won't they be a bit pissed about humans eating their ancestors?
@@tinpony9424 dont know about you...but i dont(intentionally) eat bugs.
Will the lizard people then eat the insects, or will the insects have learned how to defeat the lizard people?
Ok quimby
@@phillip6083 Have you ever eaten any kind of processed/mass produced food? Then you definitely have had some alien's ancient ancestor.
Imagine being able to do your own testing on Saturn for your thesis...
That’s so fucking gnarly
Or Uranus
@@Mr13BADluck13 We call it Ureckum now
@@whitecheddar6177 wait wha
Will never happen so keep imagining😂
Excellent Simon, thank you. As a long time fan of Robert L. Forward I’m pleased to see his ideas are still appreciated. Best Regards
Love this idea. Really hope this is launched within the next 10 yrs or so, but I do think another big issue they'll have to overcome is taking pictures going one fifth the speed of light.
If anyone is curious, PBS Space Time just put out a video about sending a light sail telescope launched and uses the sun for a gravity assistand sent far enough away to use the sun for a gravitational lense. And yes it's legit and he's a real astrophysicist.
Such an awesome channel… a rabbit hole I was happy to fall into at the beginning of COVID 😄
Very interesting, thanks Pig Benis!
They're "channels" all have the same "research " to battle over being the first UA-camer to come up with nothing original.......unless you're a typical merican 30 year old popping their head out of its fecal habit and realising they are in bread ya'll
You only just realised they're all trying to be the first to UA-cam stuff that's been UA-camd decades ago? I'm big vaginus , and no info is new research
Using the Sun for a gravitational lens would only allow us to see the things at that one specific angle of the exact opposite side of the Sun.
If there is something interesting one degree to the left, it will not be seen.
I watch allot of space engineering and your research on this is spot on.
Starshot: Big lasers. Lots of them and really big ones.
Me: You've built a weapon, Kent.
Instead of lazers, they should just build a interstellar coil gun to shoot the probes at high speeds.
many similar project has this issue, beaming back energy is possible, but the same tech that can send a few TW to a city sized dish for electricity can send it back to a skyscraper for a supervillain style doomsday weapon. the same lasers that can push a tiny spacecraft with 20% of c can be aimed at any other thing to devastate it.
@@thorin1045 That is my point. A system's efficiency as a drive is directly proportional to its effectiveness as a weapon. In theory, the most efficient drive possible would use fusion power to eject a particle stream at as near light speed as possible. That is also a particle beam weapon. Something to think about.
@@thorin1045 In fact, a major problem with all of these schemes to generate microwave energy in orbit, or on the ground, and beam it up or down, is, what happens when a jetliner flies thru it by accident? In fact, same problem with these super lasers - heaven forbid a bird or a personal jet flies in front.
@@portfolio91 all depends on the energy density and the used frequency. good combination, and the jet or even the bird will not even notice it, while the energy still comes down (you just need stupid sized dish), but nothing will prevent the source to change it into a less then nice combination.
Also, no fly zones exist for many reasons, most jetliners accept the fact, that the high voltage power lines are not for them, and the birds either can live with it or the fry. in a few year they will learn, or not.
15:00 that would mean sending a probe every week for 20 years and then a further 3.7 years allowing for Lightspeed data transmission and then you add on the time you would like to continue the study. To keep the information coming you must keep launching data chips indefinitely and if more than 2 or 3 in a row fail for some reason the entire chain could fail. So you need to send hundreds every week for 40 years to get 15 years worth of data. Not only that. You know need every chip to not only be a transmitter of data it also needs to be a receiver.
It's actually worse than that, since the size of the receiving antenna can be so much larger on earth vs the size possible one each probe (not to mention how do you power it...) means that the maximum distance between each probe in the pipeline is vastly smaller distance (it's not linear, it's a square relationship). This means the number of points of failure in a series is absurd, even IF you could meet the power requirements.
Getting the probes physically there is "technically challenging" but plausible, getting a useable signal back by either method is as much hand-wavium as FTL travel.
Oh yeah, where'll each sail get the electricity to retransmit a signal? There ain't no sun out there. Our space probes, that go past Jupiter, need a radioactive chunk of Pu-238 to keep them warm and generate electricity.
And, it's WAY COLD out there. A few degrees kelvin. Think of pluto and how its rocks are made of solid Methane and rivers of liquid Nitrogen.
You misguided fools.
Simon, love all your channels. I just ordered beard oil from Beard Blaze. I absolutely love your products. I ordered a sample pack first and found the oil for me. If you have a beard and love it, try Beard Blaze!
Great video and your passion shines through such a great channel oh channels as I’m on three of yours already love the content always a great story well researched and great narration thanks to all those involved
Great episode! Really enjoyed this one.
Love the plug for the Three Body Problem there, Simon
"Humanity's first interstellar objects"
Voyager probes: Are we jokes to you?
They are still closer than many objects that are gravitationally bound to the Sun, IIRC.
Quote from NASA: "Even though Voyager 1 travels about a million miles per day, the spacecraft will take about 300 years to reach the inner boundary of the Oort Cloud and probably another 30,000 years to exit the far side."
Starshot will be the "first" if it is succesful due to thr array overtaking the Voyager probes within a few years.
The easiest way of dealing with collisions along the way is to jettison the sails. Make the craft slowly spin and when it reaches its final speed, it releases its sails. They would be flung outward, away from the craft. Being very small, the craft would not have many collisions for the rest of its journey.
It needs it's sail first to reach it's final speed.
Just imagine 50-100 years from now, we'll be sending thousands of these things to all the stars in the Local Group and after they take their pictures for their primary mission, their secondary mission begins, being interstellar trail cams. Programmed to just sit and do nothing unless something notices them and decided to take a closer look, it takes the pictures and sends back our first look at an alien.
Starshot will start destroying Voyager spacecrafts by February 2028 at 1.32355 AU an hour. By July 12, 2078, 5 minutes before 5:00 PM, all mankind will end up being brutally extinct by the extraterrestrial beings 10 times stronger than us.
The nearest star is more than 4 light years away. Going at 1/5 the speed of light you figure out how long it will take to arrive, send a pic and for us to receive it. The nearest possibly habitual planets are thousands of light years away.
Intergalactic travel will not be very feasible, unless you were willing to be able to wait for millions of years with sub-light speeds.
@@BrjanBuckmasterGoing 1/5 of light speed would only take 20 years to reach nearest star, thats nothing. If that would be possible we would allready be sending probes. There are about 2000 stars within 50 light-years away from our sun. Possibly 10% could have planets at earth like distance from their star.
I'd like to see a swarm of these shot at a black hole or maybe a neutron star! How cool would it be to do real science up close and personal on those things?! Great video, Mega projects Crew!
Might be a good idea to build the laser arrays on the Moon.
As the moon is tidal locked to the earth, no matter where on the moon you build it, some days weeks or months during the year will be unable to target.
Not that I know exactly where AC is in the night sky and the limitations of optimizing the time it is in view.
@@torgrimhanssen5100 Still the Moon might be the best place to build it. I'm talking about a much larger laser array field that can propel not just starshot, but larger spacecraft for going to Mars and Europa. Perhaps even a hybrid laser/nuclear propelled spacecraft. I've heard project Orion's nuke detonating ship can go up to 4% the speed of light. Say u use a laser propelled sail to make it go half that speed then use the nuclear propulsion to reach 5% the speed of light then slow down using the last amounts of nuclear bomb fuel, it could reach Alpha Centauri in 88 years.
The Moon has no atmosphere to interfere with the lasers and there's helium 3 there so if nuclear fusion becomes available, it can be used to provide enough power for those laser arrays. I can see why NASA really wants to go back to the Moon now with Artemis.
@@hellothere1656 relativistic speeds for travel within our system would require lethal acceleration and deceleration. You would kill your astronauts trying to send them to mars at 4% of c.
@@xjunkxyrdxdog89 Depends on how quickly you accelerate and decelerate.
@@hellothere1656 tell me you don't understand my comment without saying it.
The fact that when I was born there were no known exo-planets in the early 1990s and now we know close to every star has it’s own solar system blows my mind. We can tell the composition of these solar systems, with many wildly different to our own with gas giants within the inner solar system. Not only that but we can start to see the light spectrum from the thin sliver of light around the planet as it passes in front of it’s star, thereby analysing the makeup of it’s atmosphere. We may find life supporting worlds elsewhere, or at least very good candidates within the next decade. If we have gone from no known exo-planets to countless planets orbiting most stars in 30 years, what will we know another 30 years from now?
Hi simon, great content as always! Keep it up
I like the way you are, Simon Whistler! The way you think is unique, keep doing what you do.❤️⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Truly outstanding! 😮
We briefly saw Light Sails in Star Wars,
Makes sense when you think about it though
RIP Stephen Hawking 😔
You were A true Successor to Einstein and Newton!
Light sails were also mentioned in Star Trek IV & there was an episode of Star Trek Deep Space Nine where Sisko takes his son out on an adventure in space on a space sail ship. Interesting concept for sure.
One advantage to a continuous swarm is that one doesn't have to wait for the "best possible" technology, we can start sending them as soon as it is physically possible with basic functionality in the probe we could achieve now. We don't even have to have every probe contain every function. Think of them as a collective or as a squad of specialists. One probe in a squad has the visible light 20k camera, another probe has the IR camera, yet another has LIDAR telemetry, the responsibilities of the probes can be distributed to reduce the individual mass of each probe. The only thing that all of them have to be capable of is networked intelligence and relay communication. Even then, there could be a communications specialist for each squad who's responsibility is to collect local weaker signals from specialised telemetry probes and begin the relay process. This could also be a "squad leader" who also acts as a network intelligence hub, unless that also needs to be distributed to it's own drone for mass considerations. As for what happens when the last probe sent is out of range, we could just not stop sending probes, albeit the continuous ones could just be communication relays. Or, a heavier probe could be sent now with existing technology for the express purpose of being a legacy communications relay by the time it reaches the outer system it would be within range of the last wave of probes.
Drinking game for today: Have a shot each time he says "Alpha Centurai" instead of "Alpha Centauri"... Have a medic on standby...
What about centurai in general(adding Proxima)
@@josephharrison5639 No medic would be able to save you...
So you're intolerant to pronounciation other than your own!?
Thank you for your video on this. It truly is mind blowing what Starshot could achieve. And forget just Alpha Centauri, there are many stars that these probes could reach at 20% of lightspeed in less than half a century. Sirius, Ross 248, 61 Cygni, Barnard's Star, Tau Ceti, etc.
Also another issue would be pointing accuracy with respect to navigation and pointing accuracy for radio/laser communications.
And the effect of radiation pressure on the sails throughout the journey, they would have to simulate the trajectory, calculate the degree of radiation and the vector it would be coming and change the trajectory accordingly on launch, like how a plane deflects left or right if there's a severe crosswind on a landing.
I always love how these things are based on something that hasn’t been invented yet.
There used to be a cartoon that had a calculation and tucked in to it was “then a miracle happens”
They're still useful projects as a way to direct research towards "these are the problems we need to solve". Turning something into a known unknown from an unknown unknown has value in itself. Where they're less useful is when those problems remain stubbornly unsolved despite decades of research and that money could have gone into blue sky research that might have found a different solution without those problems. *cough* fusion power *cough*
It took ten thousand years to go from bronze swords to iron swords. It took 2000 to go from iron swords to nuclear bombs.
"Miracle," my ass.
16:43 - What a beard!
Puts yours and mine to shame Simon! 🤣🤣
This is the feel-good news I needed today
Thanks for video, so many hidden issues remain to design such a mission. One problem you didn't mentioned is the deacceleration of the probes.
When they reach their destination nearby Proxima A or B they must deaccelerate immediately.
Otherwise they will sustain the high velocity and the surveillance window will take place only for a few hours or a day.
I guess my only “science concern” is: how do you keep momentum towards the end of the journey? At some point Centari A, B and Proxima would be impacting the probe from the opposite direction. But, this episode definitely hit the kid inside that always wants to be a part of every one of these endeavors. 🙂 Thank you for putting this one together.
"how do you keep momentum towards the end of the journey?" Momentum keeps itself. No friction. They'll be flying past the 3 Alpha Centauri stars at c/5.
They're hoping Proxima and Alpha Centauri will slow them down. That's how it'll go into orbit around them and not just zip past.
I love the energy of the first few seconds , you should totally do a skit and do max energy and director keeps cuttin and saying again till you're pourin sweat andout of breath and still tryin to deliver the same monologue. Would be fun
For reference a fifth of the speed of light is 134,123,326 mph… that is absolutely insane 🤯
This is one of my favorite videos
Giving us about 2 seconds as it whizzes by the star.
Who said we want to stay? Cool probes don't brake 😎
Imagine how disappointed scientists will be if it turns out they mistimed the camera and lost their chance to take a picture after 20 years of prep
Imagine being on the receiving end of this mass swarm of starships 😂
If there’s life out there, they’re about to see a convoy of probes, and I love that concept.
Now, I want to ask a question and shift the perspective. If a civilization elsewhere in the galaxy launched a mission like Starshot at our system, could we notice it?
ʻOumuamua - some speculation around it
I think we would notice hundreds of probes flying through our solar system at 1/5 light speed
At 4 grams each, very tiny, extremely directionally reflective, and directed at the Sun in a way that may not pass any closer to Earth then Mars, it is nearly impossible to detect such objects.
NASA is already having a hard time detecting objects many orders of magnitude larger for the purpose of cataloging impact threats to the planet, and is mainly just focusing on objects large bough to threaten cities.
@@Cloud30000 even if our instruments detect them it might be years before anyone put it together if they did at all
@@clayongunzelle9555 in the one in a million chance of catching a glimpse of a stray reflection off one of the probes, that data would never imply a computer chip is integrated into it and would likely get filed away as another one of many weirdly shaped tiny objects passing through our solar system every day
Simon: that depends on investing in future technologies today
I just read a corporate email from my employer (an international technology manufacturer) that was celebrating the top internal patent applicants within the organization. It occurred to me that this is how companies are positioning themselves for the future.
Then Simon said “duh”
Wouldn't the problem be if you tried to go to another star, that once you get towards it you either: 1) fly past super fast, or 2) that star's force slows it down and it deflects it off in another direction?
That’s only a problem if you want to orbit the star to collect long-term data; if you just want to snap some pictures, you can do that as you zip past, with hundreds of probes in succession sending one or two photos each. You will know exactly where the probes are by calculating speed and trajectory, and therefor know exactly the best point/time for taking the photo. Being cheap, they only need to send an image or two to provide an equivalent value to much more expensive probes.
Yeah it would only be a fly by. However this is enough to gather decent data. Pluto was also only flown by by New Horizons.
Wow !! This was a great one !! The kids and future generations have a shot at inspirational greatness. Let's hope none of this comes down to weaponizing to create funding. Humans should beware of ourselves for our own sake. -Ted
Problem that first comes to my mind is the space radiation messing with the computer memory - a loose particle hitting a right spot can change a bit in the memory from 0 to 1, which can either mean nothing at all or a critical system failure. It’s literally the reason why all probe CPUs are so big compared to regular user CPUs, to minimise effect of high speed particle impacts… so I don’t know how that would play into the miniaturisation of electronics.
That's not even a remote concern compared to the impact issue.
I think someone got a world record speed run on Mario 64 cos of this! Maybe wrong game, but yeah, that's a fair point.
@@matthewdearsley123 ua-cam.com/video/o3Cx2wmFyQQ/v-deo.html Not sure if he got the record or he was training.
Things like this are why I want to live forever. I want to see how far we go. Do we spread across the universe like a plague of locusts? Do we fizzle out here on our little ball of mud? Do we get enslaved by advanced intergalactic incects? These are things that I (and I'm sure Simon) want to know.
Collecting data might not be easy, but they probably can do it. Getting that data back to Earth seems impossible. If they tried to do it directly, they'd need tremendous power which I suspect won't be available. If it was a relay situation, they'd still need a lot of power, probably even more, as each link has to process signals from every vehicle ahead of it.
This is much better .....the old Simon back with real informative stuff 👈👍
Do it from the Moon!
I really enjoyed this video. Thank you for making science so very interesting!
I responded to this post notification at the speed of light
The most fascinating video I've seen for a while!!!
I must have missed the part where the size of the laser bank and the power required were mentioned as technical hurdles.
And also to keep it AIMED at these things?
Maintaining aim isn’t as much of an issue, as the laser is pulsed for a very short duration. It can be reaimed between pulses in the very narrow period each day that the rotation of the planet provides a reasonably straight path through our atmosphere.
there are sooo many technical hurdles in this sort of scheme that the laser power and size of transmitter are low priorities (imho, etc). Getting a laser beam to not diverge a lot over such distance is a huge challenge all by itself, not to mention keeping it pointed within a few arc-minutes (or arc-seconds?). I was more struck by the problem of getting a tiny transmitter with almost no power to send a signal back to another tiny object that may be hundreds of thousands of miles away, especially when there's no way to aim the antennas. This is clearly a problem that will take quite a while to even figure out if solutions exist.
@@Cloud30000 Agreed however you still need the infrastructure and the power on demand whether it is a pulse or a long duration shot. Rather see the money spent on an Alcubierre drive
@@jacqueshuot6288 if we are talking purely theoretical technology, I’d rather the money be spent on Matter-Antimatter reactors, quantum singularity reactors, and cold fusion; at least those would benefit my own vehicles.
However, we are much more likely to develop the tech to build a laser to propel micro-satellites within the next decade then we are to get warp drive within the next century.
I love the sparkles added when showing things in space
You produce high quality and quantity content that helps us dream! Thank you for your work!
When talking about the things it will encounter in space, it is important to remember that EVERYTHING is in space. Being stuck here sometimes gives a very planetary mindset.
Brilliant minds: “Let’s sail to another star!”
Facebook users: “No, stop! You’ll break the dome!"
The most exciting project I have heard of.
It feels like we are in the heady days of Neil Armstrong and Yuri Gragarin again
The odds of an impact are nearly zero? Story time. Back in the 80s, in my "Mostly Peaceful" home town, a threeway gunfight occured. None of the belligerents hit each other, but two of the men were killed by gunshot wounds. The bullets that killed them came from a completely different gunfight almost a mile away. No one else was injured, including the participants of the other gunfight.
This story contains many morals, such as,
Don't go to Fayetteville NC.
Don't fire guns blindly, please aim.
And nearly zero IS NOT ZERO.
Thank you for coming to my TEDTalk.
TRISOLARIIIIIIIS!
The Trisolaris comment at 3:07 is in reference to The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu.
1:25 - Chapter 1 - Touching from a distance
4:25 - Chapter 2 - Golden wind
8:55 - Chapter 3 - The starshot
13:35 - Chapter 4 - I think it's gonna be a long, long time
17:50 - Chapter 5 - The road to nowhere
- Chapter 6 -
There isn’t many channels that I’ll like in advance but this is one.
Howdy!
Here at Vault-Tec, we have been experimenting with this technology. Unfortunately, one of our scientists absconded with our design plans and sold them to George Lucas and ILM and we saw them put to fruition in his film, “The Phantom Menace” for the person ship of one Count Dooku.
Jesus Christ Stephen Hawking…I’m tearing up…
Cool one step closer to warp speed then we get to make first contact with the Vulcans
Hate to be pedantic but the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri
We all know you actually love it. It's okay.
@@GuntherRommel Well if I’m going to be really honest the closest to the Earth is the Sun
Hate to be pedantic, but he said the Alpha Centauri system, of which Proxima Centauri is a part 🙄
Dam Simon!!!!
You got down right poetic there at the end!!!! and correct my favorite Lyme!!
The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.The key to financial freedom and great wealth is a person's ability to convert earned income into passive and/or portfolio income."
You are right 👍
But I don't know why people remain poor due to ignorance
Assets can make one successful in life
I.bit coin
2.Stocks
3.shares
I totally agree with you, the c r y p t o currency market is the most profitable venture I ever invested in
I would absolutely love for Simon to do a mega projects video on memes. Strange? Yes. Popular? Yes. A mega project that connects countless people and is arguably one of the most popular ways of communicating various emotions and views? Absolutely yes.
11:25 Moore's Law is mostly dead at this point, sadly. Even Intel conceded defeat after 14nm was hit and got stuck on in 2015. Now it takes 2-3 times longer than before to double transistor counts per sqmm and that will only get even slower over time and eventually hit a wall at around 1nm, with the big assumption the light wavelength limit isn't hit before that since using e-beams isn't at all economical enough for a mass manufacturing method (1 trillion per sqmm without 3D stacking, which is around 50 years away from commercial manufacturing and require carbon nanotubes replacing copper wires among other leaps of tech). And that's no where near it's only problem. Sometimes the laws of physics sucks. Pretty sure this pipe dream project is just another thing that will always be right around the corner or in the next 10-20 years that never actually happens. To me it's doubtful humans will ever send anything beyond the Oort cloud before they extinct themselves.
Moore's law may need an adjustment but the scaling of feature sizes on the chip is only one method to increase transistor density, and transistor density is only one way to improve processor speed, and improving processor speed is only one way to increase processing power. You'll find that the processors will continue to use less energy, reduced manufacturing costs, achieve higher clock speeds, and have higher transistor density. I wouldn't say you need carbon nanotubes for 3D. That's just a fiction perpetuated by the CNT fan club. All these four possibilities directly convert to increases in processing power per dollar. You're correct it won't be at Moore's law anymore, advanced litho was the low hanging fruit so to speak. But the limit is not reached by minimum litho size. A transformation in technology in any of these four areas could reignite Moore's law. And withthe future of integrated analog circuits and quantum computing, or other as yet conceived architectures who knows how far we'll go?
Nice ! Really enjoyed that Simon & Team. Keep up the excellent entertainment.
I met one of the NASA scientists that worked on this project at a comic book convention. It was epic.
and top of all that, imagine what and how many technologies will spin off on our every day lifes. Great Video.
It takes a huge amount of power to decelerate the probe once it reaches the destination. If not, you just zip by. I don't think Starshot intends to even try deceleration.
I wonder if you could use the clockwork radio principle to power a probe that won’t be needed to be activated for decades, or possibly even longer.
Like a probe sent to Alpha Centauri perhaps, with Solar Radiometers on the probe to both activate the probe as it nears the Solar system its aimed towards, and recharge the clockwork mechanism like a giant self rewinding watch that never stops running.
The electronics would have to be powered like a clockwork radio, negating the need for batteries or Nuclear power, which will degrade over extremely long periods. This is the issue with the voyager probes as they age, despite the fact that the electronics and computers within the probe are functioning perfectly after nearly half a century of constant use.
The probe would have to be large and capable of making independent decisions, which may require a large amount of older hardier computer chips.
You could even go a step further, and have small landers on the larger probe that could be fired and directed towards other planets. They could be hardy probes, with a self contained non rechargeable clockwork power source of their own. Preferably a hardy probe to gather planetary data quickly, similar to the Venetian and Titan probes of the past.
The only issue would be having a secondary rechargeable clockwork mechanism to power the transmitter, which would have to be very powerful for the extremely long distances to earth. Storage of information until broadcast would be vital.
If Spacex can reduce the cost of launches further, perhaps we could have a mother ship probe that could launch smaller satellites like a Clockwork Cassinis, to examine planetary systems and their moons, as well as launch the aforementioned smaller probes.
This is a bit long winded and hypothetical but its worth thinking about
In a dark world these videos give me just enough hope to believe humans have a future in the cosmos instead of blowing each other up first
Rocheworld was first published as Flight of the Dragonfly, that's the edition I have, it has a technical report at the end describing the solar sail mission and how you can make it a return trip as well.
20, or even 40 years from now.... Simon will be gray. (and probably bald). And this may be one of the most important videos ever done. I'm proud I was here at the beginning. Ill be gone, but I love that my future littles... (all of them) will know that. Thanks Simon. This may be more monumental than even you may know. Or any of us.... for now.
So as soon as you mentioned the phrase 'light sail', I get an advert pop up for 'the ulitmate high performance auxiliary LED driving lights'. Literally, a light sale.
Outstanding y’all, simply outstanding.
Yes I heard about this, and I think you got everything covered.
Communication back to earth clearly an issue.
Also what will these micro probes use as a power source? Being so small, we can’t tag on a micro nuclear reactor.
….but as they would get there in around 20 years, the power needed will be far less than a regular probe like voyager which has taken decades to travel a fraction of the distance. In deep space or even at the edge of our solar system, solar panels won’t work.
---
I agree we can benefit from the development of this tech in the near future…solar system probes using early versions of the technology. Able to reach the planets here way quicker, while testing out early laser power and early attempts of return communications and powering the system of the probes to achieve that. What we learn will help build the longer range tech, while we benefit from the earlier short range technology. It might pay for its self?
This would be so damn cool and I am a Space guy and hadnt heard of this yet.
Thank you, Simon! Once again, you have BOGGLED my mind!😱😨🥶😰
Keep these space missions videos coming. Plane videos are fine, but space is where it's at.
Sounds amazing, never heard of it. I do hope I get to see this kind of tech. Very inspiring
One issue not touched on....
These light sail probes will have no way to correct course, move directional cameras or antennas, nor have any way to slow down once they get to their destination.
So, one traveling at 20% C will be traveling at 20% C past the objects it would be investigating and then onward forever until it smacks into something.
It will be less a "probe" and more a very fast sensor and transmitter that will hopefully be pointing in the right direction for a few minutes at the right time.
This would be much better spent on mapping exoplanets. They would only have to get to a distance of 550-750AU. Check out the latest PBS SpaceTime for how these solar telescopes work. We could map the surface of quite distant exoplanets in very very high detail.
With this covered this is one step closer to seeing a Megaprojects video on the Galileo Project
Light sails is one of the most magical, under-celebrated technologies in the world. It's the fastest spaceflight technology achievable using existing and near-future technology. A simple, ultra-thin sail that can accelerate way, WAY faster than any other existing technology, to a significant percentage of the speed of light, and can fly to another solar system within just 20 years, without carrying engines or propellant. Unbelievable !
Micro particles and even interstellar hydrogen gas is the reason that the ship in 'Project: Hail Mary" used a needle nose rocket. At those speeds, you DO have to account for such things.
One snag is that the faster the light sail travels, the longer the wavelength of the light pushing it along becomes, and the longer the wavelength the less the energy. Add to that the normal attenuation of a laser with distance, and it wont be long before the acceleration slows. Laser light spreads out much less than normal light, but it still spreads and attenuates. The journey would therefore take much longer than it would if the sail maintained its starting acceleration all the way to the target. The journey to Alpha centauri would take centuries.
I read all of Forward's stories. He also wrote stories of realistic life aboard a neutron star. Amazingly readable and delightful technology.
So unbelievably far away, yet still the closest and we can see them with the naked eye. Infinite space!!!
Fantastic as always
It would be fanciful to imagine fast radio bursts were a type of technology similar to lightsail tech.