Project Wayfinder Oracle (WO-1A): A Conceptual 10 kg Interstellar Flyby Probe...

This is a concept I have been working on for a long time. It is a 10 kg robotic probe
designed to fly through the Alpha Centauri system at 0.06c, which means it would take about
70 years to get there. I wanted to find a middle ground between the super tiny gram-scale
probes like Breakthrough Starshot and the huge crewed ships that would take centuries to
build. The big problems I tried to solve are: how to protect the probe from dust hitting it at
insane speeds, how to slow it down or steer without carrying fuel, how to keep a computer
alive and thinking for 70 years, and how to power everything that whole time. I used a
mix of ideas that already exist in research papers – a laser-pushed sail, an aerogel shield, a
magnetic wing, a photonic computer, and betavoltaic batteries. I am not saying this thing is
ready to build. Almost every part is TRL 1 or 2. But I put real numbers behind everything
so people smarter than me can tell me exactly where it breaks. That is the whole point.