[Interview+] How Breakthrough Starshot Quietly Fell Apart
Since Breakthrough Starshot was announced back in 2006 we started hearing less and less about the cause. But now it's gone practically to zero. What happened to the most realistic attempt to send a starship to another star system? Finding out in this interview.
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FRHaMOR0dJ0
Comments (9)
My company and I have been developing the Ion Propelled Vehicle or Self-Contained Ion Powered Aircraft. It is an ion thruster that has 2 patents for lifting its power supply against Earth's gravity! While there are about 50 public videos of various prototypes lifting their power supplies, some with added propellant tanks, it would take some careful consideration from the average enthusiast to realize that these crafts can also function as lightweight interstellar probes in the near future. The newest prototypes will weigh only about 15 grams and will accelerate rapidly over long periods of time, they can also work utilizing small amounts of beamed power.
We are alone in the universe. All these UFO's by the government just started several months before the advent of the space force. With all this talk of aliens there will be a much bigger budget for the spaceforce! Its a miitary psychological scam!
Great interview! Besides the discussion of the the immense technical challenges involved with fast interstellar travel and the demise of SB, I appreciated hearing two seasoned journalists talking about the sociological and grubby political dimensions of interest in UFO’s. This important analysis is too often left to cranks and conspiracists. Would like to see more of it in the future.
My question was how was a microchip-sized device going to send a signal back to Earth.
Small correction regarding the video description: Breakthrough Starshot was actually announced in 2016, not 2006. (For a second I thought, wow, can't believe it's been that long already!)
I never believed it was even remotely practical. If there's a moral to this story it's that no amount of money and or genius can make the impossible possible, it just ends in embarrassment.
I really feel the Subject of the Nobel Economics award recipients topic on innovation & Breakthrough Starshot are relative topics … hindsight of static rebalancing of financial distributions on space innovation usually matriculates to military tech when crowds have effectively gone silent …total failure usually leaves a rug behind at least!
Anyone know what's up with the Patreon Only questions show? The last one we got was for July, but it's now mid-october. I know there's a ton of questions, so maybe they're just struggling to get it done (which is fine). I'm just hoping it hasn't gone away and i missed the memo?
The naming of the question shows was always a month late, so the July show was in early August. There *was* an August show in early September. And Fraser announced (somewhere?) that the September show is running late, so mid, rather than early October. I'd expect it to show up soon.