>>10147420Longer than our combined lifteitmes. We know that signal degrades over distance, so in order to maintain reliable communication with the probe, we'd have to implement laser based communication under the threshold where distance diffuses the coherency of the data stream.
NASA has tested 45-50Mbps up/down simultaneous bandwidth with laser based communication with a probe on the moon. That's 240,000km. Light travels 300K km/s, so if we assume that signal degrades every 30 light seconds of distance, then we need a repeater every 28 to 29 light seconds distance or: a signal repeater ever 8.7 million kilometers. Distance from Earth to Pluto is 7.5 billion kilometers. Light from the sun takes about 5.3 hours to reach Pluto, and 8 minutes to the Earth. So light takes 5.22 hours to reach from Earth to Pluto.
You would need 862 repeaters if you wanted to establish a fairly consistent and reliable quality signal from Pluto to Earth with limited signal delay.
This star is 6 light years away. There are 8760 hours in a year, multiply that 6 and we get: 52,560 hours; multiply that by 862 and you get: 45,306,720 repeaters NECESSARY that would repeat the signal. Further, every say 50 repeaters, you need additional hardware that takes the signal, restrengthens it and forwards it to the next repeater (in order to account for errors through repetition). Further, each repeater needs its own power source and needs to be able to send and recieve signals for a hundred or more years, which means each repeater will have a lot of redundant hardware and the signal remixer/forwarder even more redundant hardware ON TOP of a power source that can power these probes for 100+ years. We haven't even gotten to the actual probe.
Tl;dr, its impossible. With today's technology, we'd have to design something that would be the equivalent of launching the empire state building in pure mass to orbit, with 100% redundancy and power and fuel for the journey, JUST to send us a pic or 2 back.
