“You can send hundreds of them to each solar system without breaking a sweat.” Can you demonstrate this with a BOTEC? I don’t think it’s correct. Mercury has a weight of 10^23 kg, and there are ~10^22 stars in the reachable universe, so sending say a few hundred probes to each star is already burning a significant fraction of your mass, not to mention energy costs.
The speed of reaching technological maturity is evidence in favor of my point, not against it. The faster you can reach technological maturity, the lower the EV of sending probes early is and the better it is to wait until maturity.
“You can send hundreds of them to each solar system without breaking a sweat.”
Can you demonstrate this with a BOTEC? I don’t think it’s correct. Mercury has a weight of 10^23 kg, and there are ~10^22 stars in the reachable universe, so sending say a few hundred probes to each star is already burning a significant fraction of your mass, not to mention energy costs.
The speed of reaching technological maturity is evidence in favor of my point, not against it. The faster you can reach technological maturity, the lower the EV of sending probes early is and the better it is to wait until maturity.