For context, some of the numbers here:<p>c: 300,000 km&#x2F;sec,<p>1&#x2F;3c: 100,000 km&#x2F;sec<p>Fastest man-made thing in history by far, Voyager 1: 17km&#x2F;sec<p>Time it took most recent Mars mission to get there (Mars Science Laboratory, 2011): 254 days<p>Closest Mars-Earth: 182 light-sec<p>Farthest Mars-Earth: 1342 light-sec<p>These scientists are proposing to send something at about six thousand times faster than anything man-made has ever gone in history. At this scale, the energies involved become absolutely insane. Guess what would be the energy of a tiny one-gram pebble floating in space hitting this spacecraft? Ten terajoules. That&#x27;s approximately equal to you walking along on your way to work and getting hit by, oh, I don&#x27;t know, the International Space Station (13 terajoules) or a sixth of a good sized atomic blast (63 terajoules). Space is a busy place. If you hit even one thing, you&#x27;re over.<p>But, you argue, you won&#x27;t get hit by any pebbles. I&#x27;d imagine that you&#x27;re wrong, but let&#x27;s humor you. You argue that the largest thing to hit you would be a microscopic 0.001g object. Let&#x27;s say that your microscopic object is standing perfectly still in space, somehow, even though that&#x27;s incredibly unlikely.<p>You hit this object, and instantly your craft is subjected to a ten gigajoule blast. Let&#x27;s put that into context: at an incredibly small point somewhere on your craft, rocketing along at just north of 223000000 mph, you just experienced a hit equivalent to one hundred million large caliber (.45) bullets. Let&#x27;s say the scientific payload of your craft is one gram, and the rest is armor. You&#x27;d be safe right? No, unfortunately 99.999kg of armor doesn&#x27;t seem so strong in the face of one hundred million bullets.<p>I don&#x27;t think it&#x27;s possible.