"Starshot": Work on nano spaceships for flight to Alpha Centauri discontinued
In 2016, Stephen Hawking campaigned for a project that would send small spaceships to another star in just a few decades. Nothing will come of it.
Artistic representation of the planned light sails
(Image: Breakthrough Starshot)
A project started almost ten years ago to develop tiny spaceships that were supposed to fly to our neighbouring star Alpha Centauri in a comparatively short time has been quietly and secretly buried. This was reported by the US science magazine Scientific American, citing those involved in and responsible for the “Breakthrough Starshot” project. According to the director, the program has been paused, and work is underway to transfer parts of it to other programs. In addition, the Israeli billionaire Yuri Milner has not even come close to providing the promised 100 million US dollars. The magazine quotes estimates according to which a maximum of 4.5 million US dollars is said to have been channelled.
Project primarily as inspiration
Overall, the project consisted mainly of meetings between different research groups, each working on one aspect of the ambitious project, writes Scientific American. And while the announcement gave the impression that money should not be a problem, some of those involved never received any for their basic research. Other teams received a few tens of thousands or at most a few hundred thousand US dollars for research projects. Among other things, the money was enough to keep a previously started project to develop tiny space probes alive, which were tested at least once in space. However, the US communications regulator FCC prevented further attempts.
The Starshot project was presented in 2016 by British physicist Stephen Hawking, among others. Alongside him, Milner announced at the time that he wanted to push ahead with sending nanoprobes to Alpha Centauri. Accelerated by gigantic lasers, they were to race towards our neighbouring star at 20 percent of the speed of light. During their rapid flyby there, they were to collect data and send it to Earth. There were no plans to slow them down. Those involved now say that Milner's ideas were unrealistic. For example, he had expected videos or 4K images of Alpha Centauri, which would not be possible with the planned technology. The timetable of 30 to 50 years until realization also did not appeal to him.
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What Milner and Hawking have achieved with the announcement, however, is to arouse interest in the basic idea, says one of the researchers involved. In addition, the research inspired by this has still not encountered any fundamental hurdles; in purely technical terms, such a mission should be realizable with enough money and time. Independently of Breakthrough Starshot, there are various programs in which aspects of such a mission are being researched. Meanwhile, the development of the light sails to which such probes would be attached is so far advanced that several prototypes have already been tested under real conditions in space.
(mho)
