This is a pretty cool initiative — I looked into beamed propulsion a bit while teaching a course this past fall, and it seems to me that if we (or human technol

This is a pretty cool initiative — I looked into beamed propulsion a bit while teaching a course this past fall, and it seems to me that if we (or human technologies) are going to reach a star in our lifetimes, this is by far the most likely way. Still very challenging though. For a quite detailed recent treatment of optical/IR propulsion see this paper by Philip Lubim:(http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/A-Roadmap-to-Interstellar-Flight-15-h.pdf http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/A-R...) For a thorough, if somewhat outdated, treatment of the “starwisp” idea using microwaves rather than optical/IR lasers, see this paper: http://path-2.narod.ru/design/base_e/starwisp.pdf http://path-2.narod.ru/design/base_e/starwisp.pdf by Robert Forward. To poll the success of this overall endeavor, as well as start to make predictions about which components will/won’t work, Metaculus is launching a series of questions —check it out if you have expertise or opinion: http://www.metaculus.com/questions/#/?order_by=-publish_time http://www.metaculus.com/questions/#/?order_by=-publish_time