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moralprolapse t1_j4ywwen wrote

Reply to comment by mfb- in Whats stopping us from sending a probe into a black hole if we haven't already? by stealth941

Is that 18 quadrillion number wrong then? Or what am I missing about that? Because that order or magnitude doesn’t even sound like a real number. If I’m counting zeros right, that’s 18 thousand million million times more power than doing it from Mars?

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mfb- t1_j4yyr6f wrote

It's assuming identical conditions otherwise.

  • Replace the ~1 meter antenna of a Mars spacecraft with a 500 meter telescope for a gain of 250,000.
  • Increase the power from ~100 W to ~5 MW for a factor 50,000.
  • Replace the 70 meter antenna of the Deep Space Network with another 500 meter antenna for another gain of 50.
  • Replace the 1600 light years used for the 18 quadrillion number by 100 light years for another gain of 250.

Combined that's a factor 150 trillion, so we are only worse by a factor 100 or so. We won't get the multi-megabit connections we can get from Mars, but it's still good enough to transfer tons of information over time. There is no rush - it will take 100 years to arrive anyway.

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Weed_O_Whirler t1_j50tbgd wrote

The 18 quadrillion is to get out to 1600 light years, as opposed to 100 light years as /u/mfb- is talking about.

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