Very cool. As close to free propulsion as you can get. I always feel a twinge of sadness when I realize I probably will not see colonization in my lifetime. Then again, maybe that sadness is just the Phillip Glass score in the background. The one serious issue concerning solar sails are tears due to micro-meteorites and other space trash. I heard that they are thinking about self healing sails but that is all I've heard.

What's old is new again. I bet they use the same old terms like tack , jibe, yardarm, mast, boom, clew, luff, etc. Is the mindset between the mariners of old and astronauts of the future all that different? So. Cool. Thanks.

Great Sift!
If this makes you wonder what first contact might be like then check out the novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. Like most good sci-fi it contains a ton of interesting ideas regarding propulsion, space travel, intelligence and humanity. It is available free at http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm

I'd like to see how they stop once they got to the star. Simply turning the sail around would not be enough. A combination of solar sail and ion propulsion (ion not in the acceleration phase, but for the deceleration phase). It is unclear whether the flight time is direct at maximum speed the entire way.

~3200+ years though. That is a LONG time. If we can someday get the travel time down to decades or even a century, there may be potential for a mission. Send it off. Get it into orbit.. and have it send back data. Of course, the thing would need to be completely automated. AND we'd need to have someone back at Earth with an ear to the sky, waiting for a signal.

I wonder how practical sending data such a distance would be. The energy required. You'd need one heck of a powerful transmitter.

I suspect technology would improve in time (especially 3200 years) that would obsolete the mission to begin with. Imagine sending such a ship... to have a faster one PASS it on the way to the star 1000 years later.