The founders behind Starcloud, a startup with plans to operate a fleet of GPUs in orbit, have a new pitch for potential investors: A plan to send a tiny spacecraft on an 80,000 year journey to Alpha Centauri. This ambitious project is the brainchild of Philip Johnston, Adi Oltean, and Ezra Feilden, along with program manager Garret Jameson, who are part of the non-profit behind the mission dubbed Fermi Explorer.

If they do it, it will be the first human-built object explicitly aimed for another star, and the sixth to leave our solar system. The initial team has put together a plan to use proven space technologies to send a vehicle with a 10 cm square payload, weighing 1 kilogram, into interstellar space.

The founders say they are launching this mission in the spirit of human exploration; to achieve a historical first; and to test the limits of the Fermi paradox, which attempts to explain why we have yet to find other intelligent life in the universe, and gives the mission its name.

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Mission intended cost about $15

The mission is intended to cost about $15 million, and to launch in 2029. The non-profit is soliciting vendors to build the vehicle, funding to pay them, and scientific and artistic payloads to send, ala the sensors and Golden Record onboard NASA’s Voyager space probe, the first human spacecraft to leave our solar system.

This approach is a deliberate departure from most other plans for interstellar exploration, which often rely on pushing the frontier of technology.

"I also got excited and then disappointed!" Johnston said of Breakthrough Starshot, another nonprofit that aimed to launch a light-powered spacecraft towards Alpha Centauri. "That's the reason we are doing the mission. We are hell-bent on actually launching something in three years.

… the big difference with most other [interstellar] missions and the Fermi Explorer is that the others all try to do it in a human lifetime, which means billion-dollar propulsion R&D programs. We have very deliberately picked 80,000 years as the minimum viable mission."

The plan is to launch the spacecraft on a rocket rideshare, then use efficient but low-power electric propulsion to slingshot the vehicle into a series of orbits that will eventually leave it bound for Alpha Centauri. The spacecraft is intended to be active for about 12 years before entering a final coast phase toward the other solar system.

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When you consider the vast distances involved and the slow methods we have to cross them, this approach may seem daunting, but the founders are confident in their plan.

"If a dinosaur bone can last 200 million years then a metal box can easily survive the radiation environment we expect for 50,000 years," Johnston said. "We don’t plan on powering spacecraft up at the end of the 80,000 years. We hope that a future human civilization will intercept it."

The Fermi Explorer mission is an ambitious undertaking, but it has the potential to make history and shed some light on one of humanity's most enduring questions: are we alone in the universe? The non-profit behind the mission is now soliciting partners, donations, and advice from experts and enthusiasts alike.