Culberson isn’t stopping there. He has written a 50-year plan for NASA that includes a spacecraft that can go 10 percent the speed of light for humanity’s first interstellar mission to the nearest Earth-like star. The launch date is 2069, 100 years after the first moon landing.
Even at that speed, which would be phenomenal, it would take over 40 years to reach Proxima. Even longer if one includes the time to accelerate and decelerate from those speeds. We’re going to need a breakthrough technology for practical interstellar travel.
As the former transporter chief of the USS Enterprise you’d think Miles O’Brien could manage Proxima B in less than 50 years. :o)
Better hope we have the breakthrough technology before the Trisolarians (Proxima and two friends). See: “The Three Body Problem.”