Humans have dreamed about traveling to other star systems and setting foot on alien worlds for generations. To put it mildly, interstellar exploration is a very daunting task.
As Universe Today explored in a previous post, it would take between 19,000 and 81,000 years for a spacecraft to reach Proxima Centauri using conventional propulsion (or those that are feasible using current technology). On top of that, there are numerous risks when traveling through the interstellar medium (ISM), not all of which are well-understood.
Under the circumstances, gram-scale spacecraft that rely on directed-energy propulsion (AKA lasers) appear to be the only viable option for reaching neighboring stars in this century.
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