How long Will The First Mission To Proxima Centauri Last?

Proxima Centauri is the closest star to our solar system. Still, it is so far away that with modern technology, it would take us tens of thousands of years to reach it, but if any space travel technology is capable of building a ship that can get out of the solar system and make our way to the stars. How long would it take us to reach Proxima Centauri? What would that spaceship be like, and who would be on board?
Let's find out!
It is essential to understand some details about Proxima Centauri. This star is 4.24 light-years away from our sun, meaning light takes more than four years to travel from there to Earth. It is a red dwarf star, much smaller and cooler than our sun. Its glow is so dim that it cannot be seen with the naked eye, even from the darkest place on Earth. Despite this, the proximity of Proxima Centauri makes it a desirable target for space exploration.
The answer to how long the mission will last depends on several factors, including the technology available, the speed of travel, and the time astronauts can spend in space before returning. Currently, the fastest speed at which we have sent a spacecraft is around 200,000 km/h, which is only 0.02% of the speed of light. We would need to develop technology capable of much higher speeds to reach Proxima Centauri in a reasonable amount of time.
One of the possible solutions for this is nuclear propulsion. This technology would use nuclear power to generate a large amount of momentum and speed, allowing the spacecraft to travel much faster than today. However, this technology is still in a very early stage of development, and it is not clear if it will be usable for a human-crewed mission shortly.
Another option is laser propulsion, which uses laser beams to propel a spacecraft at incredibly high speeds. This technology has proven effective in laboratory tests and could be a viable option for a future man-crewed mission to Proxima Centauri. However, further testing and development are still needed before it can be used on a real mission.
Once the propulsion technology has been decided, the travel time to Proxima Centauri will depend on the distance the spacecraft has to travel. Although Proxima Centauri is the closest star to us, it is still an enormous distance away. At the current speed of spacecraft, it would take us more than 6,000 years to get there.
GENERATION SHIPS

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Credits: Nasa/Shutterstock/Storyblocks/Elon Musk/SpaceX/ESA/ESO/ Flickr

Video Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:39 Details about Proxima Centauri
02:02 Laser propulsion
02:40 Generation ships
04:30 Some ideas in fiction
06:00 "Aurora" spaceship
07:40 Most viable technologies ( solar sails)
09:34 How long will the trip take?

#insanecuriosity #proximacentauri #generationship

[InsaneCuriosity]

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[fob]

So we want to travel 4.24 light years, while the farthest distance humans have ever traveled is less than 1.5 light second

[NeidalRuekk]

Project Daedalus has potential if all you want to do is study the star system. It accelerates to 4-5% the speed of light, reducing the travel time to about 80 years, and then explores whilst radoing back information that takes 4.25 years to reach us. Sure takes a while, but is a good alternative to a 6000 year trip!

[Rocky-xxzg]

The Crew and passengers will be at each others throats long before it ever gets there.

[bigjermboktown]

I think the bigger question is what the hell you going to do when you get there and you're possibly stuck on that ship? Seems like the best thing to do would be to fly halfway there we have some kind of badass telescope to see the solar system and see if it's even worth continuing then maybe you could use the other half of your fuel to fly back home if it ain't worth it

[chapinrey]

A robot mission in our life time would be more realistic.

[JanLarson]

At any significant fraction of the speed of light, the crew onboard a traveling spaceship would experience time dilation whereby time does not pass as rapidly for them as it does for those remaining on Earth. Be that as it may, human travel to the Proxima Centauri system is something that none of us will ever see.

[Mobscene_CDN]

I don't recall there being a Generation Ship in Interstellar. Cooper Station was basically just an O'Neill Cylinder around Saturn, it wasn't designed to travel to other stars. And the station designed on Earth definitely didn't look big enough to be Cooper Station or a different one similar in size to Cooper Station.

[jssomewhere]

Realistically attaining speeds up to 20 or 30% SOL will be easier to do than shielding the ship. At least as of now humans seem to have focused on how to go ever faster. All that speed will be pointless when that tiny space rock shreds the front 3rd of the ship or worse. Developing the shielding will need as much focus as the propulsion to get human traveller's any where in reasonable spans of time.

[ABBADiego]

So, you blast off on your journey knowing you won’t get to see proxima yourself but your kids might. Then decades later your kids see a strange spaceship overtake you. It is inevitable that the 1st spaceship probably will be the last to arrive as many new versions will have been invented since you left in the original ship.

[morcheba]

The elephant in the room just my opinion but the faster you go the further ahead you have to see, the smallest rock could wipe out the entire mission manned or not
Atb

[mikekoch]

We can't safely handle a manned mission to Mars yet. Our fastest space ships can't go as fast as the earth goes around the sun (19 miles/sec.). That is why it takes years to get to the planets, and we have to use the gravity of planets as a slingshot. The speed of light is 10k times faster than that. My guess is that it will be a century before we are ready to make a journey to Proxima Centauri, if not longer.

[ranaskip]

And when your grandkids get there only to find there surounded by 3 suns and a few uninhabitable planets, then what? The first astronauts made there decision to go, their kids and grandkids did not. There is a big moral quistion here.

[mpetersen]

Likely the first mission to Alpha Centari will last long enough that the second passes it.

[haidarkinoo]

what if the Earth itself is already a Generational

[Hyltran]

I believe that people don’t get on a generationship because of the distant arrival.

But because they are offered a job opportunity that will give them, their families and their descendants a good future and a good life onboard the starship.

[anasrabbani]

Human will never be able to go beyond our solar system. It’s just not possible.

[bratsos]

The only way to become this travel reality is the majority of the crew must be robots.
Only few humans required.

[patman]

there is so much to explore in our own solar system first, proxima can wait

[heatherharger]

How do they know that Proxima Centauri's planet is not like VENUS, and how would they get a manned ship past all of the asteroid fields that are in this system?😮