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> How long will it take to reach them?

185 years at 0.2c [1][2]. (No deceleration at the other end.)

[1] https://hpf.psu.edu/2026/06/30/gj-3378b/#:~:text=Introductio...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakthrough_Starshot#:~:text=...

It doesn’t matter how long it’ll take to reach them. The real benefits of such moonshot (or alien-shot) projects is the technological breakthroughs that come about from them. For example: water purification systems which were originally built to sterilize spacecraft drinking water.

As far as I’m aware, the science at the moment says that we cannot reproduce in space, so unless we send embryos that are raised by the machine machines it’s likely impossible

> the science at the moment says that we cannot reproduce in space

It absolutely does not. We don’t know if mammals can reproduce in space because we haven’t done those experiments yet. The closest we’ve come is culturing mouse embryos for four days on the ISS [1].

[1] https://phys.org/news/2023-10-mouse-embryos-grown-space-japa...