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A solar gravitational lens will be humanity's most powerful telescope (2022)

(phys.org)
197 points amichail | 1 comments | 15 Oct 24 11:52 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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mmaunder ◴[16 Oct 24 23:10 UTC] No.41864824[source]▶
Spoiler: the focal point is 3.5x the distance to Voyager 1.
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trhway ◴[16 Oct 24 23:45 UTC] No.41865034[source]▶
if to use existing nuclear reactor tech and already existing, as tested by NASA (and drives Starlink satellites), ionic drive - about 3500 ISP - that focal point would take about 10 years to reach. I hope that SpaceX flights to Mars will, after the probably first chemical ones, be done using ionic drive with solar as it is just faster, thus getting tech developed and with adding nuclear for beyond Mars - so in 10-20 years we'll have the stuff flying. (note that "small" reactors - 100MW - we have for submarines, and with MS, ORCL, GOOG, AMZN getting into nuclear we'll have such small reactors productized into normal commercial use which will simplify space use too as commercial use require higher reliability/etc. compare to military)
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kibwen ◴[17 Oct 24 00:29 UTC] No.41865260[source]▶
> that focal point would take about 10 years to reach

Is this taking into account the time needed to slow down?

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1. rcxdude ◴[17 Oct 24 09:16 UTC] No.41867797[source]▶
You don't need to slow down, the region where you can do the observations is basically a slowly expanding cone the further you get away from the sun. But it does sound like the current plan involves a 25 year journey before observations start.