Sad Trombone Exoplanet Reality Check
When I was a boy in the Soviet Union in the late 80&#x27;s, I picked up a book on computers. It was targeted towards children, and talked about a lot of different components and ideas from bits and bytes to RAM to networking, and interesting applications like barcodes.<p>I remember my mind being blown by barcodes. But the idea seemed far-fetched and unrealistic. To put a barcode on EVERY single item in the grocery store? That would take decades to implement!<p>Then we emigrated to Canada and I was shocked to see it was already in place (and must have been for a while).<p>Maybe this isn&#x27;t the best example of tremendous human achievement but it taught me to not take for granted what is unrealistic and how quickly humanity could achieve it if we put our minds to it.<p>With apologies to Cliff Stoll and his magnificent brain, let&#x27;s not forget a pretty common perspective on the Internet from 1995: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;europe.newsweek.com&#x2F;clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-nirvana-185306?rm=eu" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;europe.newsweek.com&#x2F;clifford-stoll-why-web-wont-be-ni...</a><p>Space exploration and rocketry is not cheap, and requires new innovation. Only SpaceX is doing anything on that front. But if humanity set getting to Proxima Centauri as a goal, I have no doubt we could achieve at least kicking off a single-generation journey within my lifetime (ie sub-80 year journey time in the next 80 years)