Would a solar probe survive the trip to Alpha Centauri? Obviously it wouldn't do anything along the trip, but if we launched a solar powered probe at Alpha Centauri do you think it would last the trip so it would power up when it got there and send data back to us? I know it would be a a long wait, but some of us believe in planning ahead.|||well the chances of it hitting anything are slim, so i would say as long as it is programmed correctly and there is no mechanical failure, there is no reason to think it would be anything but a stunning success.
But there is one thing to think about- with technology progressing at an almost exponential rate, there is a very good chance that if we did launch a probe, we would descover a new means of propulsion while it is inroute and humans could beat the probe there.|||That's several hundred thousand years, and we do not have the technology to do that.
Such "planning ahead" is pointless until we have better propulsion technology. Give me a 100 year travel time and I'll start to listen.|||Almost certainly such a probe would survive the journey. But let's assume that it's average velocity was the same as Voyager 1 is currently moving away from our sun (..3.6 astronomical units per year..) it would take some 70,000 years for your probe to make it to Alpha Centauri. Within such a time span one of two things would surely occur -- 1. mankind will be extinct or 2. we'll have developed the means for *practical* interstellar travel, in which case we could just wave at the ancient probe as we went flashing by : )
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment