Hi All

Gary said...

[big snip]
Again, the big problem with using a JIMO type vehicle for this search is NOT letting people know that it is a hunt for ET. Lots of people would oppose a garden variety NEO search, prefering the money spent on their own pet projects. Once the word got out that the hidden agenda was "searching for ET", the opponents would use the "giggle factor" to zero out funding. The project would have to be sold as an Earth defense scheme against asteroid collision.

Gary

...keep talking like that Gary and you'll have E.P. on your side. It's a good concept.

There's also a archaeo-SETI researcher Alexei Arkhipov who has written extensively on looking for solar-system artefacts. Some high-lights: meteor trails with spectra like unusually refined metals, plus a few semi-regular patterns in Clementine pictures that might be old Moon bases [tho the're probably just too many craters close together.]

Duncan Steele also has written on various odd asteroids with light-curves like shiny metal, while Duncan Lunan has revisited the concept of a Bracewell probe at Earth's Lagrange points, "contacted" in the 1920s when Long-Delay Radio Echoes were first being researched, and perhaps prudently abandoning its post in the 1960s after the first moon-probes.

Personally I think that starship performance will be better than 0.05 c, but you might be right. Certainly for mobile artificial planets the maximum velocity will need to be lower than for probes, and is there a need to go faster when you're that big?

However will it be steel? Surely carbon/silicon derived materials are more likely and hardier against impacts and the rads such a vehicle would encounter. An abandoned ship or arrival stage would then be akin to a C-type asteroid with high spin, yet high porosity too. Perhaps a high-resolution search for rapid spinning C-types that don't look like elongated rubble piles would be a good start.

Adam