Ever since coming back from the Breakthrough Discuss meeting in Palo Alto, I have been pondering the enormous issues the Breakthrough Starshot project will encounter. Getting a tiny spacecraft up to twenty percent of lightspeed is only the beginning of an effort that...
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Breakthrough Starshot: Mission to Alpha Centauri
Here on Centauri Dreams we often discuss interstellar flight in a long-term context. Will humans ever travel to another star? I've stated my view that if this happens, it will probably take several hundred years before we develop the necessary energy resources to make...
Breakthrough Discuss Concluding Today
Breakthrough Discuss 2021 wraps up today, with presentations on mission concepts to Alpha Centauri, lightsail technologies and fusion propulsion. Of particular interest to me, in light of the magnitude of the problem as it affects the Breakthrough Starshot idea, is a...
Breakthrough Propulsion Study
Ideas on interstellar propulsion are legion, from fusion drives to antimatter engines, beamed lightsails and deep space ramjets, not to mention Orion-class fusion-bomb devices. We're starting to experiment with sails, though beaming energy to a space sail is still an...
SETI: Breakthrough Listen Expands the Search
The SETI effort run by Breakthrough Listen is beginning to hit on all cylinders. Yesterday came news that observations at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope in New South Wales have been extended. You may recall that work at the site began in November of 2016, when...
Holographic Sails for Project Starshot? — Homage to Bob Forward
One of the reasons I described Greg Matloff as the 'renaissance man of interstellar studies' in my Centauri Dreams book is the continuing stream of ingenious ideas that he develops and delivers through papers and conference presentations. I found the holographic sail...
Breakthrough Discuss Streaming Live
I don't usually reproduce news releases here, but this one is of unusual interest given that I am both a strong supporter of Breakthrough Starshot and a partisan for getting academic conferences available through live streaming. Breakthrough Discuss begins today and...
Breakthrough Listen Data Becoming Available
Andrew Siemion (Berkeley SETI Research Center) presented results from the first year of the Breakthrough Listen initiative last Thursday at the Breakthrough Discuss meetings in Palo Alto. The data can be acquired here, with the caveat that file sizes can be gigantic...
On Breakthrough Discuss
Although I hadn't thought I would get a post off today, I do want to get this Breakthrough Initiatives news release out about the upcoming Breakthrough Discuss meeting. Pay particular attention to the online options for participating. BREAKTHROUGH INITIATIVES TO HOST...
Starshot and the Gravitational Lens
Although the idea of a mission to the Sun's gravitational lens has been in Claudio Maccone's thinking for a long time, it has never been linked with the financial resources of a concept study like Breakthrough Starshot. The Italian physicist led a conference on...