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Comment by joshlegs | Hacker News Reader

there is an effort to put super mini spaceships on missions to other solar systems, and they would travel at something like 20% the speed of light. I think it works by having the probes be like the size of a cellphone or something, and being attached to a solar sail, then using an incredibly high powered laser to pump the solar sail full of energy to get it going so fast. I think if that architecture works they could reach ... proxima centauri? ... in something like 20 years.

just pointing that out to say that i think we have technology that would take less time than 450k years :)

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However, a transmitter with enough power to signal earth would be too massive to get fast with a solar sail, given today's technology. Maybe a chipsat gets to 20% c, but no way a dish does.

Found the wiki page for the project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot

so it looks like they'd want to launch by 2036. In the 'technical challenges' section, it does mention that some technologies would have to be miniaturized sufficiently, but it doesnt really mention much about whether that technology has reached viable stages or not, or whether it's a realm they'd have to specifically research further.

So I guess maybe the technology doesn't exist today? Sounds like probably not, but maybe the near future -- or at least they expect it to exist by 2036.

It's worth noting this project has backing by some pretty influential folks, including Stephen Hawking when he was still alive.

What if the chipsat sends the signal to the chipsat behind it which sends the signal to the chipsat behind it which....

So that the signal can be relayed by a bunch of short range transmitters all the way back to earth

Probably requires a surprising amount of short range transmitters to be launched then. I wonder if a formula could be developed that relates the energy needed to place one large transceiver at a given distance versus the energy needed to place small transceivers all along that given distance.

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