[cecilpl]

To be honest this is one of the more real proposals I've seen for an Interstellar probe, and there are still many problems to be worked out as both the paper and the comments here point out.

I admire the optimism in the paper though, even if its misplaced. Maybe pooling together resources in the scientific and engineering communities to develop an interstellar probe system could give a working result, but there are some significant hurdles to overcome first. It would be a big project, taking many years to see fruition, but at the same time it could also be a game-changing development and a hugely inspiring feat.

Could we see probes in other star systems by 2075? I think its not an unreasonable suggestion.

[Robotbeat]

Interstellar flight is an insane challenge. It’s one of the hardest things humankind can attempt yet still not beyond the laws of physics. That means you have to approach things from first principles and often have to invert the problem (“assume we manage interstellar flight by 2075. How did we do it?”, etc). It’s intellectually seductive in the best way.

I think it’s good to attempt such challenges, even if just conceptually, as it makes lots of other things seem a lot more achievable in contrast, sometimes almost laughably so.

[ryandrake]

I've always thought interstellar probes were kind of pointless. Even if the probe could average 10% of the speed of light, the amount of time it would take for a probe to reach its destination (all but the closest stars) and then for data to return at the speed of light is greater than the lifetime of anyone who wants to study. You'd have to send out the probe, hoping that your grandchildren wait around for the response.

Interstellar space exploration will likely be manned-only. As other threads point out, with sufficient acceleration, due to time dilation, humans can reach distant stars within their own lifetimes (at the expense of thousands of years passing on Earth).