Re: OK, great, we can get something to Alpha Centauri with a lightsail. Now what?
"Unless you are sending a lightsail "ark" full of settlers to Alpha Centauri, what is the point of this trip? You've just spent billions of $ to build your spaceship, sail and lasers, and you aren't getting anything back."
We have already spent huge amounts of cash (multi-billions) to send things into space that we will never get back. Almost everything that we have thrown up there with very few exceptions was on a one-way trip.
Perhaps we could send oh, say an unmanned device to explore another star system with a means of communicating those results back to Earth? After all, 4 - 5 years to receive a transmission is acceptable given that it was nine years before the New Horizons team saw images of Pluto. Yes, it's going to take a lot longer to get to another star system than the trip to Pluto but it's not an unthinkable time if we can hit a low fraction of c. About 0.05c has been estimated as possible which gives about a century to the nearest stars.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
