Another point for anyone considering whether we should send a space-probe there...
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.
So, just diving one by the other, we'd looking at something like 18 000 years as a rough order of magnitude for sending something from Earth to Proxima Centauri.
You'd be much better off waiting, well, even a thousand years for technology to improve rather than sending something now.
Note: this is a very 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're still looking at somewhere between a thousand and a hundred-thousand years.
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.
So, just diving one by the other, we'd looking at something like 18 000 years as a rough order of magnitude for sending something from Earth to Proxima Centauri.
You'd be much better off waiting, well, even a thousand years for technology to improve rather than sending something now.
Note: this is a very 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're still looking at somewhere between a thousand and a hundred-thousand years.