Re:NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, ...
by throwaway74902 on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @05:17AM
(#37478532)
We won't get the capability to build probes that approach the speed of light if we keep observing instead of beginning to build the probe.
Re:NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, ...
by _ph_ on Tuesday September 12, 2023 @07:37AM
(#37479519)
Nobody said something about stopping building probes. That will continue and eventually lead to probes which might approach the speed of light. But the achievable targets for the next decades are planetary, not interstellar.
Re:NASA says distant exoplanet could have rare water ocean, ...
by throwaway74902 on Friday September 15, 2023 @11:31AM
(#37524581)
Nobody said anything about stopping building planetary probes.
So the short term solution (in the order of decades) is improve the observation capabilities. More observations with the JWST should give a better idea what the next iteration of a space telescope for this job should be and give some motivation of accelerating building such a telescope. JWST itself took decades to build and deploy. It would be remarkable, if an improved telescope could be deployed in a 10 year time frame. Of course, an operational Starship would help a lot with that, as a lot of effort for JWST was the complex deployment mechanism.