This is a pretty cool initiative — I looked into beamed propulsion a bit while teaching a course this past fall, and it seems to me that if we (or human technologies) are going to reach a star in our lifetimes, this is by far the most likely way. Still <i>very</i> challenging though.<p>For a quite detailed recent treatment of optical/IR propulsion see: [this paper by Philip Lubin](<a href="http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/A-Roadmap-to-Interstellar-Flight-15-h.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.deepspace.ucsb.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/A-R...</a>)<p>For a thorough, if somewhat outdated, treatment of the [“starwisp”](<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwisp" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starwisp</a>) idea using microwaves rather than optical/IR lasers, see [this paper](<a href="http://path-2.narod.ru/design/base_e/starwisp.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://path-2.narod.ru/design/base_e/starwisp.pdf</a>) by Robert Forward.<p>To poll the success of this overall endeavor, as well as start to make predictions about which components will/won’t work, [Metaculus](<a href="http://www.metaculus.com/questions/#/?order_by=-publish_time" rel="nofollow">http://www.metaculus.com/questions/#/?order_by=-publish_time</a>) is launching a series of questions —check it out if you have expertise or opinion.