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Comment by BrandonMarc | Hacker News Reader

What would the "right" target be?

Alpha Centauri is actually the right target for our first interstellar probe since it's the closest system. There's just no inhabitable planet there, as far as we know.

Stross answers that.

My response is "under your feet".

Stross says Gliese 581c on the grounds that it's the closest currently known vaguely-habitable exoplanet. Most likely there are others closer and we haven't found them yet.

Probably not Alpha Centauri since it's a binary system.

A habitable plainet would require a vaguely Sun-like star. Odds of one hiding between us and a. Centauri are low. Gleise or a neighbor are best bets, and near exoolanets are also generally easier to spot.

Not one hiding between us and Alpha Centauri (which is unlikely), but one of the hundred or so stars between us and Gliese 581.

Closer exoplanets aren't necessarily easier to spot, we've spotted those around Gliese 581 because they have a nice short period of a few days.

Ease of finding an exoplanet, among other things, increases with proximity.

A close and attentive reader of my original comment might possibly note that my argument wasn't for Gliese but against a. centauri. The salient point being that you'll need to schedule and budget for markedly more than 4.6 light years.

Yes, I've thought that, too. Just give up on manned interstellar travel, and redefine the Earth as your spaceship. It may be the only answer, but it's a bit sad all the same.

I think Earth has to be closed enough from the Sun to get heath, otherwise the whole mankind will die from cold.

I didn't mean take the earth and move it, i meant just call the earths natural motion your "exploration", i.e. give up on manned interstellar travel.

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