Thanks for explaining. I see what you mean now. But I still don’t get how this is useful. Why not simply send the larger ship in the first place, instead of sending the building materials?
Perhaps it’s easier to accelerate smaller things? You can give the nanoprobe all the necessary momentum in the solar system—it doesn’t have to carry any fuel—whereas you can’t feasibly accelerate an entire ship to near-c within the solar system.
Yes, it is about price: this scheme will be a trillion times cheaper, as I discuss in a comment above. A super-intelligent alien AI may not worry about prices, but if it has some resource limitations, it would use more economical solutions.
Thanks for explaining. I see what you mean now. But I still don’t get how this is useful. Why not simply send the larger ship in the first place, instead of sending the building materials?
Perhaps it’s easier to accelerate smaller things? You can give the nanoprobe all the necessary momentum in the solar system—it doesn’t have to carry any fuel—whereas you can’t feasibly accelerate an entire ship to near-c within the solar system.
Yes, it is about price: this scheme will be a trillion times cheaper, as I discuss in a comment above. A super-intelligent alien AI may not worry about prices, but if it has some resource limitations, it would use more economical solutions.