04-18-2016, 07:57 AM
Interesting
There are a number of challenges to make this work, which they freely admit, but most of them seem reasonably doable with enough time and money thrown at the research. The biggest challenges might be the survival of the probes en route, getting governments to agree to the laser array, and making the starchips capable of sending back whatever they find.
Extending this into OA, we have passing mention of 'survey swarms' and 'terraformer swarms' that are apparently some kind of swarm based, automated tools that explore or terraform planets. They presumably consist of a great number of rather small units, although are probably larger and faster than what is described here in the main. Still, such tiny probes (or something close to them) might be deployed from larger (but still quite small) probes for a variety of applications.
Todd
There are a number of challenges to make this work, which they freely admit, but most of them seem reasonably doable with enough time and money thrown at the research. The biggest challenges might be the survival of the probes en route, getting governments to agree to the laser array, and making the starchips capable of sending back whatever they find. Extending this into OA, we have passing mention of 'survey swarms' and 'terraformer swarms' that are apparently some kind of swarm based, automated tools that explore or terraform planets. They presumably consist of a great number of rather small units, although are probably larger and faster than what is described here in the main. Still, such tiny probes (or something close to them) might be deployed from larger (but still quite small) probes for a variety of applications.
Todd