Non-Trivial Problem of Communication with Interstellar Probes
If we want to send an interstellar probe to the nearest stars, getting there isn't the only problem. We explore non-trivial problems like getting the signal back from the probes, communicating within the swarm, choosing which data to send back and much more with Marshall Eubanks.
Watch the video here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/gH73Gwt1crU
Non-Trivial Problem of Communication with Interstellar Probes (Vimeo)
Comments (9)
Sorry, I meant 150 Km/sec .. and yeah , I found an online calculator. Roughly 40 weeks to get to Neptune. Also, 150 Km/s does not sound that big a number in the vastness of space. Nor does it sound unachievable(Ion Engines) and opens up the entire solar system for travels !!! Hope we get there in next 30-40 years.
Is there any space distance calculator online ? In case I wanted to calculate the time taken to go and come back from Triton at 150 kmph .. how long would that be ??
Triton is 4.3 billion km, so that would take you about 3,200 years.
Very interesting. Like Ian Cooper however I don't believe Breakthrough Starshot will ever be practical for exploring other star systems. The question of getting usable data back is still unsolved, even with the "coordinated swarm" idea. Those units within the swarm would have to communicate a lot with one another to coordinate, choose the data to send and to do a coordinated transmission (where each unit sends one pixel out of thousand). All this needs a bunch of computing power (and energy) additional to the energy needed to do the transmission itself - those small units will however not able to hold much computing power, but even less power in terms of energy. They will also not be able to harvest much energy from the star, being small and passing fast. If they could somehow use up some of their kinetic energy, say by interfering with magnetic fields or similar - maybe. The distances are so huge, any transmission will either use up lots of energy or not be discernible from noise. A narrow beam could reduce that amount of energy a bit, but I doubt that such a swarm could narrow its coordinated transmission enough, at least with current technology.
This is the question they were trying to solve. Can you transmit simultaneously from the entire swarm and get a higher bandwidth than a signal from a single spacecraft.
Fraser, Breakthrough Starshot will never be practical, sending probes round the solar system, maybe. There's a fun YouTube video "How Many Nuclear Power Plants Can Power the Enterprise?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6L1f2m30bM where the author tries to calculate the Enterprise D's power requirements in terms of standard nuclear reactors, but the bottom line is that even if the Earth was covered entirely in reactors they wouldn't be nearly enough.
That's why exploring the Solar System is so important. We start there, learn the constraints and then decide if we want to tackle interstellar space.
At 0.2c (20% of the speed of light) the time dilation is only 1.0206 i.e. for every hour (3600 seconds) that passes on Earth the probe would experience 73 seconds fewer (3527 seconds.)
You'd barely notice.