Originally Posted by ImmortalCow

I think he assumes that a powerful thinking machine would be able to quickly produce new knowledge, perhaps using simulation or just deductive reasoning.

It's not a far stretch to imagine, especially if we assume quantum computers are invented by that point. You could simulate all possible laws of physics and come up with new ones or correct old ones, in a few seconds.

Originally Posted by PlataBear

If you take into account the law of inertia(I assume you all know what it is) then all you have to do is get up to an extreamly fast speed and then you just stop, it will keep going. However 42 light years is very very very far, that wouldn't be possible for quite some time, but it could be.

Originally Posted by Klux

No. The thing isn't if we will or won't be able to reach 42 ly's, the question lies in weather we should do it. Just because we can do something doesn't always neccessarily mean that we should do it. And in terms of scientific astronomical progress, we still have yet to successfully land a manned spacecraft on a terrestrial planet.

More on topic and to be specific to the question, no I don't think we will. Firstly, even NASA, being the world's top space exploration agency, would not be able to afford something as big as this. Secondly, as Boredpayne has pointed out, there is a profound lack of resources to even attempt to experiment with this. Thirdly, even it is more or less impossible for a human to survive a speed needed for this to succeed. Can you imagine yourself going over 1 billion miles per hour constantly for 42 years?

Originally Posted by SilentAssassin

42 x 5.87849981e12 miles/LY = 2.4689...e14

Or, if you want to look at it in its actual scale: 246,896,990,000,000 miles

Obviously, manned flight won't be possible unless we can find a way to stop aging. Even if we accomplish that, the sheer G-force of travelling at near light speed would kill the person anyway.

So, we'll probably have to find some way to bypass this distance. I have no doubt that we'll discover a way to harness the power of wormholes, but the question is how long this will take. Having to use dark matter/energy, in my opinion, will take way too long to master, because we don't necessarily know all of its properties or activity, and probably never will, albeit we don't know much about wormholes either, but significantly more than dark energy. The discovery of the Higgs Boson may help, as being able to use the Higgs field to apply an incredible amount of force on the spaceship would make it go faster, but there has to be an immense amount of research, at least 50-60 years before we even have an idea of how to travel this far in a relatively short time.

Originally Posted by ImmortalCow

Secondly why shouldn't we visit the nearest earth-like planet?

Originally Posted by ImmortalCow

Thirdly we can easily perform a manned mission, it's a real non-issue. If NASA wanted to / wasn't having it's budget cut, then it would be doing this in 2 years time anyway.