I’d figure something like “some proportion of probes should build big telescopes purely for advanced scouting. Maybe not every probe in every star system, but, sometimes.” And you could just have this probe be one such instance.
But, I did think it was a pretty cool idea that you could beam software to probes (edit: and I think it’s sometimes worth including interesting tech ideas that are at least plausibly a good idea in hard sci f)
Also, I think this addressed one concern I’ve heard raised about probes drifting out of sync with their creators over time, and this was an interesting mechanism for maintaining control over them over eons.
I’d figure something like “some proportion of probes should build big telescopes purely for advanced scouting. Maybe not every probe in every star system, but, sometimes.” And you could just have this probe be one such instance.
But, I did think it was a pretty cool idea that you could beam software to probes (edit: and I think it’s sometimes worth including interesting tech ideas that are at least plausibly a good idea in hard sci f)
Also, I think this addressed one concern I’ve heard raised about probes drifting out of sync with their creators over time, and this was an interesting mechanism for maintaining control over them over eons.