COLLOQUIUM: The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative: A Funded Interstellar Flight Project
The Breakthrough Starshot Initiative (BSI) is an ambitious program to send tiny spacecraft to nearby stars within a few decades, traveling at about twenty-percent the speed of light. Starshot will combine advances in micro-electronics, nano-tech and photonics (lasers). These interstellar probes are likely to carry artificial and perhaps sentient intelligences. Will machine based AGIs be better for exploring and occupying the Galaxy than biological intelligences? It may turn out that the stars will belong to synthetic awarenesses – our very different descendants.
