
Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerberg Plan Interstellar Mission to Alpha Centauri - prostoalex
http://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/04/yuri-milner-zuckerberg-starshot-interstellar-centauri/477669/?utm_source=SFFB&amp;single_page=true
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11480840](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11480840)

------
japhyr
This is the first project I've read about that produces a visceral reaction in
me: a project I'd love to see develop, but which I probably won't live to see
the results of.

I'm 43 now. Let's be optimistic and say this technology is proven in the next
5 years. Then a craft is built and launched in the next 5 years. Then there's
20 years of travel, and 5 more years before the images come back. If it all
worked out perfectly, that's 35 years from now, and I'll be 78 if I'm still
around. What's more likely is that a strategy for sending probes to nearby
stars will be clarified in the next few decades, and I might live to see the
first interstellar probes launched. I will die happy that we're reaching out,
but sad to not know more about what's out there.

 _Every year, the lasers would blast streams of probes towards new star
systems. Before long, there would be probes en route to every star within ten
light years. As the search radius expanded outward, data return times would
lengthen to decades. But the delay might produce a lovely effect. As the
centuries wore on, an expanding sphere of the universe would slowly reveal
itself, in vivid detail, as waves of images returned from the stars._

I'm happy to know the universe in much greater detail than what I learned when
I was a young kid. I'm also happy that others may live in a time when probes
from generations before will be beaming back their first transmissions.

------
bogomipz
Zuckerberg must suspect that there's an untapped pool of new Facebook users to
be had there.

------
datadata
What is the plan for the only-few-gram weight space probe to transmit data
back to earth?

~~~
x5n1
Potentially quite a bit. Just imagine with the sort of stuff we're doing right
now. In 100-200 years we might be able to send a fully functional AI there for
that much which could potentially start building civilization from scratch
there. Or maybe even enough DNA to clone a human. It's a good idea to do this
ASAP, because sooner or later we're going to mess up this planet and probably
the solar system. It's what we do best.

~~~
ceejayoz
That's not a plan, that's "and then magic happens!"

~~~
imron
Magic is just advanced science.

I'm sitting here communicating with you, located on the complete other side of
the world, using a device that fits in my hand and that also allows real-time
video communication with almost anyone, almost anywhere on the planet.

200 years ago that would have been magic.

I'm just sad I won't get to see what 'magic' is available 200 years from now.

Maybe not any of the things the grandparent post mentioned, but barring some
global calamity, whatever it is, it will be magical by today's standards.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Magic is just advanced science.

OK, but @datadata asked what the plan is for a one gram near-future
interstellar probe to communicate across four light years of space, and @x5n1
answered with "AI!".

