I’m not saying it’s practical, but if materials can be preserved through such low temperatures it may be the only shot we have at it with our current tech level.
It would be a increadable longshot however. The probe would be dark as it is launched frozen, so no course corrections can be made (though a active helper section can be added for part of the trip) so you have to be dead on in the initial aim, and lucky along the way that nothing nudges it off it’s target. And it would only have a probability of getting to the star instead of missing it and flying off to the side due to random hits along the way and the initial aiming ability.
It would also be a flyby probe, basically thaw out, start running, take pictures, transmit back, repeat till the power source dies or it refreezes or it runs into something. Making something like this to slow down seems too much for this tech level, perhaps a solar sail can be deployed, but i see no real chance of getting into orbit except by luck.
I’m suprised this thread has gone on this long without anyone mentioning Project Daedalus or Project Icarus.
Daedalus was a design study done in the 1970’s by the British Interplanetary Society for an interstellar probe. They believed they could reach Barnard’s Star (about 6 l.y. away) in 50 years using a two-stage fusion rocket. Daedalus wouldn’t have stopped at it’s destination, but zip past at 0.12c. They seemed to think the engineering challenges could be solved (although IMHO the fusion rocket concept still seems far-fetched today), and that the main obstacle was economic - the massive vehicle would be so expensive to construct, it would require an unprecedented level of international cooperation for a long period of time.
Icarus is a current revisiting of the Daedalus design, the main difference being this time they want to allow for some deceleration before reaching the target while possibly trading off a longer transit time. They don’t have a specific target selected yet, but are considering stars within 15 l.y., which they think they could reach in a century.
Anyway, looking at either will give you some idea of the problems involved in an interstellar mission.
Deceleration approaching the goal is a formidable complication. But it also looks to be necessary.
Without it, a probe at V=0.05c would have an extremely brief useful observation time. If we figure that it needs to be within something like Sun-Jupiter distance to be effective, that’s about 20 hours. For detailed observation, you probably need something like Sun-Earth distance, which you’d have for perhaps a few hours.
There’s also the point that if you hope to derive meaningful energy from the destination star (which sounds like a good - possibly essential - plan) you need to stay tolerably close to it for much longer than a high-speed flyby would allow.
When the probe wakes up it should send out a signal, “Help! Jane! Stop this crazy thing!”, and hope there’s someone at the other end with the technology to slow it down.
This is the kind of thinking that makes me love this place. Systems that go dark while hurtling through interstellar space then are “fired up” by solar panels as the destination system arrives, perhaps using that power to deploy a solar sail to act as a braking force.
Lets sort all thats wrong with this planet first before we waste even more money on space exploration…how much has it cost to find out if Mars ‘might’ have been able to sustain life 30 billion years ago?..
Ive got a ground breaking idea…lets sustain life here first eh
Both of those are fascinating design studies, but wildly optimistic in what they assume “near future” technology will entail. For example, Daedalus would require tens of thousands of tons of helium 3, acquired from something like large scale Jupiter gas mining.
you could decelerate enough to swing round the star with a solar sail, and after you swing round use the laser back at home to decelerate you further until you enter orbit
I think this is the way they do it in A Mote in God’s Eye
We didn’t ship any of that money to Mars. It’s all right here on Earth, where it started. It was used to buy parts and pay salaries, exactly like every other type of spending from Halloween costumes for dogs to fast food takeout boxes to the electronic device you used to post your thoughts on this subject.