<story><title>Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00400-3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>uwuemu</author><text>A probe based on nuclear pulse propulsion could do it in around 50 years, with today&amp;#x27;s technology. It&amp;#x27;s not that we can&amp;#x27;t do it fast (within one average human lifespan), it&amp;#x27;s that the project would be very expensive and something like Nasa has a relatively tight budget.&lt;p&gt;I mean we, as humanity, have to have an eccentric billionaire start a Martian fire (SpaceX Starship) under our lazy asses to even start to think about getting to Mars in a reasonable timeframe and in reasonable numbers (to start a colony). We are not funding making our species multiplanetary for the last few decades because we were too lazy, how can anyone expect us sending anything to the closest star (other than the sun)... You can&amp;#x27;t.</text></item><item><author>NeoTar</author><text>Another point for anyone considering whether we should send a space-probe there...&lt;p&gt;The current fastest man-man object is the Helios 2 space-probe, reaching something like 25 000 kilometres per hour. Proxima Centauri is 1.3020 parsecs away from Earth.&lt;p&gt;So, just diving one by the other, we&amp;#x27;d looking at something like 18 000 years as a rough order of magnitude for sending something from Earth to Proxima Centauri.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d be much better off waiting, well, even a thousand years for technology to improve rather than sending something now.&lt;p&gt;Note: this is a &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; dodgy line of reasoning. The Helios probe got a massive speed boost from a close encounter with the sun. But even if the speed is wrong by a factor of ten, we&amp;#x27;re still looking at somewhere between a thousand and a hundred-thousand years.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>spaetzleesser</author><text>Going to Mars seems pretty useless to me at this time.  It’s a super hostile environment and we don’t have the technology yet to have a self sustaining base there. Give it a few decades and progress in robotics will make a Mars base much easier. There is plenty of work to be done on Earth. We have to solve clean energy production and in  general reduce pollution. These are massive technological challenges that deserve massive funding.</text></comment>
<story><title>Earth-like planet spotted orbiting Sun’s closest star</title><url>https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00400-3</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>uwuemu</author><text>A probe based on nuclear pulse propulsion could do it in around 50 years, with today&amp;#x27;s technology. It&amp;#x27;s not that we can&amp;#x27;t do it fast (within one average human lifespan), it&amp;#x27;s that the project would be very expensive and something like Nasa has a relatively tight budget.&lt;p&gt;I mean we, as humanity, have to have an eccentric billionaire start a Martian fire (SpaceX Starship) under our lazy asses to even start to think about getting to Mars in a reasonable timeframe and in reasonable numbers (to start a colony). We are not funding making our species multiplanetary for the last few decades because we were too lazy, how can anyone expect us sending anything to the closest star (other than the sun)... You can&amp;#x27;t.</text></item><item><author>NeoTar</author><text>Another point for anyone considering whether we should send a space-probe there...&lt;p&gt;The current fastest man-man object is the Helios 2 space-probe, reaching something like 25 000 kilometres per hour. Proxima Centauri is 1.3020 parsecs away from Earth.&lt;p&gt;So, just diving one by the other, we&amp;#x27;d looking at something like 18 000 years as a rough order of magnitude for sending something from Earth to Proxima Centauri.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d be much better off waiting, well, even a thousand years for technology to improve rather than sending something now.&lt;p&gt;Note: this is a &lt;i&gt;very&lt;/i&gt; dodgy line of reasoning. The Helios probe got a massive speed boost from a close encounter with the sun. But even if the speed is wrong by a factor of ten, we&amp;#x27;re still looking at somewhere between a thousand and a hundred-thousand years.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>semi-extrinsic</author><text>Maybe an unpopular opinion, but Musk is just plain wrong when he thinks there is any urgency to Mars exploration (or it&amp;#x27;s just vicarious arguments because rockets are cool).&lt;p&gt;Basically, the tech you need to make a Mars colony truly self sufficient is something like a compact fusion powerplant.&lt;p&gt;Before we have that, no point in worrying about using Mars as a &amp;quot;backup plan&amp;quot;, because if Earth was screwed, Mars would have a couple of years to live at most.&lt;p&gt;And obviously it would be vastly better for humanity if Musk spent money on zero-emission large scale energy production, than on rockets.</text></comment>