Interstellar travel is coming - The breakthrough of gram scale space crafts

In this episode we will explore the bleeding edge of satellite and satellite constellation miniaturization. These awe inspiring craft commonly known as Chipsats, Wafersats, Sprites, Monarchs, Kicksats, Starchips, or even just “Smart Dust” are facilitating the rapid miniaturization of space craft following an exponential trajectory stipulated by Moore's Law, no doubt enabling new incredible possibilities and discoveries just around the corner.
We talk about the unique physics and associated challenges that these low-mass vehicles face in space, how incredible engineering is overcoming them, and how the Breakthrough Starshot project will tackle the very difficult problem of sending a spacecraft interstellar to Proxima b.

Our guest today is Professor Zachary Manchester, who studied physics and aerospace engineering at Cornell University earning his BS and PHD respectively. Zac undertook his Postdoc at Harvard and became Assistant Professor at Stanford University, and later at Carnegie Mellon University where he now heads the Robotic Exploration Lab. He received critical acclaim for his Kickstarter.com crowdfunded Kicksat project - deploying an armada of chipsats in LEO and has published together with Mason Peck and Avi Loeb and is member of the Breakthrough Starshot Research team, who are working on an interstellar spacecraft mission to Proxima-b.

CONTENT
00:02:36 Intro
00:05:51 Inspiring Moments | Working with Professor Mason Peck
00:06:47 What are Femtosats, Attosats, Zeptosats, Yoctosats, Chipsats?
00:11:29 Regulatory Constraints | Collision Risks
00:15:12 Cubesat & Chipsat costs
00:20:00 Most valuable uses cases and applications
00:25:50 Chipsat Communication
00:28:28 Length Scaling
00:32:16 Thermal Equilibration
00:34:12 Attitude Determination and Orbit Control
00:43:36 Bio-inspired Constellation Management
00:53:15 Limits of Miniaturization | Smart Dust
00:56:00 Breakthrough Initiative | Starshot
00:59:45 Starshot Payload
01:07:39 Is Earth going to look like a Death Star?
01:08:59 Nuclear Propulsion
01:15:00 Most advanced Breakthrough Propulsion
01:16:18 The Origins of the Chipsat Idea | Kickstarter Campaign
01:30:42 Next Research Projects
01:35:09 Hard Problems to solve
01:38:58 Science Fiction becomes Science Fact
01:40:20 Why space and why space now?

SHOWNOTES
[1] https://www.ri.cmu.edu/ri-faculty/zachary-manchester/

[2] KickSat: A Crowd-Funded Mission To Demonstrate The World’s Smallest Spacecraft https://roboticexplorationlab.org/papers/KickSat_SmallSat.pdf
[3] AttoSats: ChipSats, other Gram-Scale Spacecraft https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.12559
[4] R-selected Spacecraft https://engrxiv.org/wxhpt/

[5] https://breakthroughinitiatives.org/initiative/3
[6] https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.01306

Microsats 10-100kg
Nanosats 1-10kg
Picosats 100g - 1kg
Femtosats 10-100g
Attosats 1-10g
Zeptosats 0.1-1g
Yoctosats 10 to 100mg