It's not quite true to say it would take thousands of years to reach our nearest star. If only people weren't pussies about the small matter of exploding hundreds of nuclear bombs in the atmosphere, we could use technology that existed in the fifties to accelerate spacecraft to as much as a tenth of light speed. Proxima Centauri in a matter of decades, no problem.

There's no reason to actually do that; nothing to be learned, nothing to gain in terms of technology or resource exploitation or potential for the future, but god damn it, it would be cool.