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The BBC and the Guardian both carry stories about an unmanned interstellar spacecraft designed to reach the Alpha Centauri system "within a generation" (30 or so years).
The spacecraft would be miniaturised to the size of an average silicon chip, and be propelled by a solar sail which would receive a boost from a powerful laser on the Earth.
Milner's Breakthrough Foundation is running a project, backed by Hawking, to research the technologies needed for such a mission, which they think will soon be feasible.
takyon: The campaign is called Breakthrough Starshot. Breakthrough Initiatives also announced the release of initial observational datasets from the Breakthrough Listen 10-year SETI effort.
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Stephen Hawking and Yuri Milner's $100 Million Interstellar Spacecraft Plan
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday April 13 2016, @03:42AM
I was under the impression that the badass laser would be able to accelerate the tiny lightweight spacecraft to 0.2c with a very short pulse duration, maybe hours long, not years. The whole setup is intended to weigh about 2 grams, 1 gram for the craft/chip, 1 gram for the meter long solar sail.
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