Author Topic: Design a mission to Proxima b  (Read 68846 times)

Offline Propylox

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #200 on: 09/20/2017 03:52 pm »
-snip- I've missed the rationale why 'something' has to be sent there.
Sounds like a job for new telescope technology.
Fair point - that if our telescopes are good enough, why send a mission. I'd argue that no matter how good our telescopes become, such as very lightweight designs, they'll never be better than sending a smaller version through the target system. In addition, a mission would necessarily gather radar and gravitational data and likely broad solar observations. To what end?
The pursuit of science and broadening, confirmation or contradiction to established theories. Here's my original proposal that awoke this zombie thread, with its focus on solar data or (C) two habitable systems.

Why stop at Proxima b? Consider the design requirements for any such mission;
1- A giant curtain array and a large optical telescope for observation
2- Advanced star tracking that can orient itself in interstellar space
3- Nuclear power and a layered approach to propulsion
4- The ability to identify and avoid objects as well as estimate and navigate multiple gravitational bodies. Due to the distance, whatever the last course changes Earth sends based on the information the probe gathered before that, the spacecraft will have to modify or ignore the instructions and chart itself based on updated and enhanced data. It may bend itself around smaller planets and the star, but should steer clear of large planets, their systems and the gravitational consequences avoidance maneuvers would have on trajectory.


With such capabilities just to get to Proxima b, the capability exists to fly through the system, around the star and onto another. Here's three missions, each about fifteen lightyears long.

A) to Alpha Centari= 4.365ly , to Luhman 16= 3.673ly , to WISE 0855-0714= 6.005ly ; Total = 14.057ly
Solar masses of 1.10, 0.907 and a 0.123 Red Dwarf + 0.045 and 0.040 Brown Dwarfs + a 0.0059 sub-BD

B) to Sirius= 8.583ly , to Procyon= 5.200ly , to Luyten's Star= 1.120ly ; Total = 14.903ly
Solar masses of 2.02 and a 0.978 White Dwarf + 1.50 and a 0.602 White Dwarf + a 0.26 Red Dwarf

C) to Epsilon Eridian= 10.522 , to Tau Ceti= 5.450 ; Total = 15.972ly
Solar masses of 0.82 + 0.783, both with habitable planetary systems
« Last Edit: 09/20/2017 03:54 pm by Propylox »

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #201 on: 09/20/2017 03:55 pm »
I like it. 

How does one go about demonstrating the requirement for a 100+ year service life with the spacecraft and ground support facilities while maintaining the budget below 1 trillion?  Software and hardware is practically obsolete within 3 years. Maybe the idea is shoot a swarm of objects toward proxima B?
And yet somehow the Voyagers, launched in the late 1970's continued to operate for the next 40 years, despite not even being programmed in a HLL.

Real embedded systems, developed to aerospace standards, are a good deal more conservative, and a good deal more reliable, than consumer products.

This may be inconceivable to anyone who was not even born when they launched and has never known a world where you get a "download available" message once a day.  :(
« Last Edit: 09/20/2017 04:08 pm by john smith 19 »
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline john smith 19

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #202 on: 09/20/2017 04:08 pm »
Budget of about a trillion dollars is to be expected for an interstellar mission.

But for beamed propulsion, these aren't one-shot missions but a stream of them.
I think how cost effective this is will depend on the mission planning. If you can point the array at other targets for set periods you can launch swarms to multiple targets. If you can even point most of the array at other targets (with a few to maintain alignment on the swarm) you can launch to other targets.

Regarding the Sci Am article. I'd say this is V 0.1 technology. It's a start, and they've proved they can get to an actual launch (some teams have struggled a lot longer to get to this stage).

I also note it seems to be there's a problem with the larger satellite some of them are attached to, not the chips themselves. So it looks like the concept of a Satellite_On_A_Chip is not quite as ridiculous as some people have thought. I think a lot of people were skeptical of this.

The real problem for this is the chip tech for good flash and lasers is so different from main stream bulk transistor tech that it's simpler to end up with a micro LTCC hybrid circuit board, which can have embedded actuators in quite easily, however that's likely to be heavier. 
MCT ITS BFR SS. The worlds first Methane fueled FFSC engined CFRP SS structure A380 sized aerospaceplane tail sitter capable of Earth & Mars atmospheric flight.First flight to Mars by end of 2022 TBC. T&C apply. Trust nothing. Run your own #s "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof" R. Simberg."Competitve" means cheaper ¬cheap SCramjet proposed 1956. First +ve thrust 2004. US R&D spend to date > $10Bn. #deployed designs. Zero.

Offline Stormbringer

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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #204 on: 11/16/2017 06:29 am »
Red Dwarf; Ross 128 11 LY away has a planet in or very near the life zone. Ross 128 is also not a flare star. the planet in question may have a temperature of a chilly -60 to a warm 20 degrees C (or 68 degrees F.) It only receives 1.35 times the radiant energy that earth would. AND this booger is positioned just right for near term measurements that should reveal much more about it including spectroscopic biomarker measurements.

https://phys.org/news/2017-11-closest-temperate-world-orbiting-quiet.html

oh to add something actually on topic:   There are articles on studies of magnetospheric plasma braking at the distal end of any probe to anywhere including proxima b. :)

https://www.nextbigfuture.com/2017/11/theoretical-research-on-magnetic-sails-for-stopping-interstellar-probes-at-other-stars.html
« Last Edit: 11/16/2017 06:38 am by Stormbringer »
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Offline rdheld

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #205 on: 11/16/2017 11:15 am »
Anyone read the primary article in A&A?

Online jebbo

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #206 on: 11/16/2017 11:23 am »

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #207 on: 11/16/2017 08:40 pm »
just for grins and giggles...

...does anyone remember articles about weird radio signals coming from the vicinity of Ross 128 earlier this year?

(cue Twilight Zone music)
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Offline hop

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #208 on: 11/16/2017 09:20 pm »
just for grins and giggles...

...does anyone remember articles about weird radio signals coming from the vicinity of Ross 128 earlier this year?
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43363.40

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #209 on: 11/17/2017 12:43 am »
just for grins and giggles...

...does anyone remember articles about weird radio signals coming from the vicinity of Ross 128 earlier this year?
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=43363.40

 Ignoring the geostationary satellite hypothesis for this anomalous signal;  this signal and that planetary discovery changes Ross 128 from "not the least bit interesting" to nearly a "got to go to" place for intense study or as a destination for probes. Luckily the mini-probe idea means we can pepper the entire near by stellar neighborhood with probes. We would not be limited to just a singular or just a few probes. we do not have to choose this star or that and exclude all the others.
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Online jebbo

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #210 on: 11/17/2017 08:03 am »
Ignoring the geostationary satellite hypothesis for this anomalous signal;

Why would we ignore that? It is pretty definitely the cause ...

--- Tony

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #211 on: 11/17/2017 09:09 am »
Ignoring the geostationary satellite hypothesis for this anomalous signal;

Why would we ignore that? It is pretty definitely the cause ...

--- Tony
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Online jebbo

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #212 on: 11/17/2017 09:40 am »
...You're no fun at all.

 :)

Ross 128 b is reasonably interesting, but as I said in the thread you linked, I think the habitability is overblown.
Right now, we can find out *much* more about Proxima b, even though it doesn't transit, and it is a much more realistic target for probes (partly thanks to alpha Centauri A/B)

In general, "habitable zone" causes too much excitement, particularly around M dwarfs: tidal locking and volatile/atmosphere loss ... but we still need to look at them. Extremely exciting times.

--- Tony

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #213 on: 11/17/2017 04:56 pm »
...You're no fun at all.

 :)

Ross 128 b is reasonably interesting, but as I said in the thread you linked, I think the habitability is overblown.
Right now, we can find out *much* more about Proxima b, even though it doesn't transit, and it is a much more realistic target for probes (partly thanks to alpha Centauri A/B)

In general, "habitable zone" causes too much excitement, particularly around M dwarfs: tidal locking and volatile/atmosphere loss ... but we still need to look at them. Extremely exciting times.

--- Tony
I'm Kind of dubious about the idea of  micro probes working. However if they do work then selecting missions will not be a matter of high risk high cost low rate of occurrence missions as they currently are for large high dollar probes. Instead when you probe it'd be more like this:

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Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #214 on: 12/03/2017 01:33 am »
And after 37 years of dormancy voyager fires it's thrusters:

https://phys.org/news/2017-12-voyager-thrusters-years.html

And they work fine. And there is still ground support facilities and personnel around and paid to tend to it.

So this mission is how old? Voyager 1 was launched on September 5, in the year 1997. Voyager has been on route for over 40 years.

Alpha Proxima is 4.243 light years away.

If Voyager were traveling at ten percent C it would  only have  the .243 LY bit to go and be taking all sorts of really close up reading films and so on. It would be roughly 5 years away from a close fly by. (or perhaps orbital insertion disregarding the effect of braking on travel speed and time of flight.) It would have been doing science and looking at stuff for all of the trip. 40 years of deep space data and discoveries that could not help but be unique in many ways.

« Last Edit: 12/03/2017 01:55 am by Stormbringer »
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Offline Stormbringer

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Offline StealthGhost

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #216 on: 01/26/2018 07:00 pm »
I would want to make a bunch of small probes designed to be easily mass produced. A bit like that breakthrough starshot proposal where a bunch of small iPhone sized probes small enough to contain a camera, a battery & some sort of telemetry equipment to at least be able to take pictures of planets in that system & send them to earth. The idea of having a bunch of small probes instead of one big probe insures that theres a likely chance at least a small handful of probes will make it because most will get destroyed along the way by interstellar dust & other possible hazards between stars also it reduces cost of the mission.
« Last Edit: 01/26/2018 07:02 pm by StealthGhost »

Offline KelvinZero

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #217 on: 01/26/2018 09:07 pm »
My concern was the dust and radiation on a tiny probe. This link suggests it is not as bad as I thought.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/08/could-breakthrough-starshots-ships-survive-the-trip/

Offline Stormbringer

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #218 on: 01/28/2018 02:46 am »
i always thought the risk was akin to going out into a thousand mile wide desert in which there is some desert plant every KM or so and putting a blindfold on spinning in circles and throwing a rock and expecting it to hit a plant. the odds as i have read them were akin to 1 probable hit per square meter of the probe or spaceships frontal cross section per day by a dust mote or smaller sized impactor. a  postage stamp sized probe is a lot less in frontal dimensions to a meter square object used to make the calculations. furthermore; its riding a freaking laser beam of sufficient power to accelerate it to a modest fraction of the speed of light. which means most of the laser beam precedes the probe and smacks the ever loving stuffing out of everything in front of it. :) T om e the real problems with the scheme are communications (getting the data back from the probes at a strength that can be detected at planet earth.) and having enough sensor diversity and resolution to get a reasonable amount of knowledge back for the price.

Because scientists have now made picometer scale error correction possible for telescopes and interferometers. (just announced last week in the popular science media websites.) This means we can examine an aliens tonsils from earth if there are any. seriously it means they can screen out a small planets reflected light from its parent star for several hundred light years and may be able to do multi platform optical interferometry.
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Offline lamontagne

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Re: Design a mission to Proxima b
« Reply #219 on: 04/19/2018 10:00 pm »
i always thought the risk was akin to going out into a thousand mile wide desert in which there is some desert plant every KM or so and putting a blindfold on spinning in circles and throwing a rock and expecting it to hit a plant. the odds as i have read them were akin to 1 probable hit per square meter of the probe or spaceships frontal cross section per day by a dust mote or smaller sized impactor. a  postage stamp sized probe is a lot less in frontal dimensions to a meter square object used to make the calculations. furthermore; its riding a freaking laser beam of sufficient power to accelerate it to a modest fraction of the speed of light. which means most of the laser beam precedes the probe and smacks the ever loving stuffing out of everything in front of it. :) T om e the real problems with the scheme are communications (getting the data back from the probes at a strength that can be detected at planet earth.) and having enough sensor diversity and resolution to get a reasonable amount of knowledge back for the price.

Because scientists have now made picometer scale error correction possible for telescopes and interferometers. (just announced last week in the popular science media websites.) This means we can examine an aliens tonsils from earth if there are any. seriously it means they can screen out a small planets reflected light from its parent star for several hundred light years and may be able to do multi platform optical interferometry.
For very small probes, the problem is interstellar plasma.  There is a lot more plasma that dust, and at the scale of these devices the electromagnetic radiation created by plasma impacts is damaging since it penetrates into the vehicle electronics. 

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