Can we launch an interstellar probe with current tech?

Whatever you're smoking, Albert, I want some...

It costs $100,000 per pound to put something in orbit right now (substantially more if you want to put it on the moon). There is no infrastructure on the moon; there are no mines, quarries, living quarters, powerplants, transportation systems, foundries, warehouses, cranes, tools, chemical plants. To populate the moon with enough people and stuff for it to be self-sustaining would take decades. And, although it's easier to get to space from the moon, I'll remind you that the moon's escape velocity is still in excess of 1 mile per second. Since we're not even planning on revisiting the moon for at least a few decades, I wouldn't hold my breath on any of this.

Yes, we'll settle the moon and eventually Mars, too. But none of us will be here to see it. I now firmly believe that a manned landing on Mars will not happen in my lifetime, a thought which saddens me deeply. I'd put Mars at 50+ years out now.

In a hundred years time---certainly in two hundred years---we human beings will be sending manned expeditions to Jupiter and Saturn. Footholds will be established, bases will be built, and, slowly, colonies will arise. We'll probably be sending out our first real interstellar probes about the same time, though, no doubt we'll already know A LOT about nearby solar systems through telescopic study.

Manned interstellar travel? If humans continue to increase their production of energy, then...perhaps. I'm actually somewhat skeptical. My guess for the earliest human interstellar voyage is 300-400 years from now. That's if it ever happens at all.

Out of 24 men who went to the moon in one capacity or another, only 21 are left alive right now (or 87.5%)

Out of the 12 men who walked on the moon, only 10 are still alive (or 83.3%)

And all of these men are around 80 years old. I doubt we'll see men walk on the moon again during any of their lifetimes.

A rocket a day helps keep the high costs away. If you believe Musk of SpaceX, he's planning on getting launch costs down to $500/lb. Without some kind of massive project like building a lunar colony, etc., you're not going to see a reduction in launch costs at all.

It all depends upon what happens in the next decade or so. If fabber technology reaches near Star Trek replicator capabilities by that point, then there will be humans on Mars and reaching outwards. Otherwise, you can stick a fork in us, we'll be too busy worrying about all the problems which will be hitting the fan by then to do anything else.

I'm leaning towards the latter, I'm afraid.

I'm actually leaning towards "never." There are too few of us left who still hold the dream. Everybody with any kind of authority or power is too busy trying to maintain their power, or blow other people up.

^We have to go out there.

Unless we find some method of 100% perfect recycling we're going to run out of planet to dig up for extracting materials, and other bits to dig up to bury shit we no longer need, before too long. At that point we'll head outwards.

As for not picking the nearest star, it would be terribly amusing if sent probes to all the earth like planets in the galaxy and found them abandoned.

Finally we go to Alpha, and there we find a wormhole to a paradisical reality all the Milky Way civilizations had long emigrated to, with a sarky AI enquiring why it took us so damn long, after all they'd only parked the bloody thing for us at the nearest star

Orville Wright: "Well, hell, Wilbur, the damn thing will only fly 120 feet. If it's not gonna make it across the ocean, why even bother building one?"

(not).