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magnabosco t1_jd7s4v9 wrote

Reply to comment by 3SquirrelsinaCoat in A New Mission Will Search for Habitable Planets at Alpha Centauri by Aeromarine_eng

If you sent several in a chain, the probes could transfer the data back to each other, eventually coming back to earth, no?

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3SquirrelsinaCoat t1_jd7uak6 wrote

Sending data back is the point, and I don't think you need a chain to accomplish that - just make sure the antenna is pointed in the right direction. The person above me seemed to suggest that the probe itself will be brought back, and that's not so. But the data, definitely.

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Representative_Pop_8 t1_jd7wmdp wrote

I think the plan is to send a chain, reason is that the v prices would be too small to power any type of transmitter that could reliably reach earth, so you use the train to relay. also redundancy since space v dust could damage some probes

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valetofficial t1_jdaby07 wrote

You might as well just make von Neumann probes at that point.

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