Space and astronomy news
Getting to Proxima Centauri b will take a lot of new technologies, but there are increasingly exciting reasons to do so. Both public and private efforts have started seriously looking at ways to make it happen, but so far, there has been one significant roadblock to the journey – propulsion.
Other non-conventional solutions could work, such as nuclear propulsion or ion drives. However, they fall victim to the tyranny of the rocket equation – since they have to carry their fuel, they have to carry more mass to go faster, thereby eliminating much of that benefit.
Recently, optics research has developed a way of combining particle and laser beams that all but eliminates diffraction and beam spreading when both are used simultaneously. This would allow a beamed propulsion system to continue concentrating its beam on exactly the right place without slowly losing its pushing force as the probe gets further away. Dr.
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