Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
So how long to get there under our current limitations?
Alex
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For the younger forum members possibly during their lifetime. Look up
Breakthrough Starshot
Breakthrough Starshot is a research and engineering project by the
Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a
proof-of-concept fleet of
light sail interstellar probes named
Starchip,
[1] to be capable of making the journey to the
Alpha Centauri star system 4.37
light-years away. It was founded in 2016 by
Yuri Milner,
Stephen Hawking, and Facebook founder
Mark Zuckerberg.
[2][3]
A flyby mission has been proposed to
Proxima Centauri b, an
Earth-sized exoplanet in the
habitable zone of its host star,
Proxima Centauri, in the Alpha Centauri system.
[4] At a speed between 15% and 20% of the
speed of light,
[5][6][7][8] it would take between twenty and thirty years to complete the journey, and approximately four years for a return message from the starship to Earth.
The conceptual principles to enable this interstellar travel project were described in "A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight", by Philip Lubin of
UC Santa Barbara.
[9][10] Sending the lightweight spacecraft involves a multi-kilometer
phased array of beam-steerable
lasers with a combined coherent power output of up to 100
GW.
[11]