That would actually be perfect for long range interstellar probes. A constant source of energy for thousands of years, even that small, would propel a craft to reasonably high speeds. Give a spacecraft a few pounds and you'd have something really great.
So given that, assume you put an array of batteries together, what is the formula for Batteries of qty=N allowing a range of Z AU comm ability to earth / current-AU-distance == distance-from-earth before we will not be even able to receive said comms...??
So how far can they get on N batteries before we cant hear them?
Is there such a thing as "solar-syncronous" and "galactic-syncronous" orbit such that we can deploy a TON of little relays that would speed up comms to each probe to the Earth?
I.E. we have however many in a sphere around the solar system, then at some AU distance out, that the extending probes can contact more efficiently?
Assume that the little diamond batts can only reliably transfer a signal by AU/.00X - then we need to create grids of these little guys at AU/.00X intervals to relay the signals within the power capabilities of the probes...
or is this a stupid thing to say?
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This begs the questions; what is the best method/technology for sending messages between sensors through space?
We can still hear the Voyagers, how long do their signals take to get here? How much data do they send? How long will their batteries last? How far until they go dark? (they are already like 34 times as far from us as we are from Jupiter.)
If you put a radio at ~10X the distance of Pluto, you can use the sun as a gravitational lens, and communicate with another star using milliwatts of power:
But if it's for interstellar probes, we could use just carbon-14 and keep the diamond...? Unless we're wrapping it in a diamond to protect the electronics.
