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No, it’s not Star Trek yet, but it could be a way to reach the stars within the lifetime of many of us.

The initiative is called Breakthrough Starshot—a research and engineering project by Breakthrough Initiatives to develop a proof-of-concept fleet of light sail spacecraft, called StarChips, capable of making the journey to the Alpha Centauri star system, 4.37 light-years away, at speeds between 20% and 15% of the speed of light, taking between 20 to 30 years to get there, respectively, and about 4 years to notify Earth of a successful arrival. The conceptual principles to enable this interstellar travel project were described in “A Roadmap to Interstellar Flight,” by Philip Lubin of UC Santa Barbara.

The project was announced April 12 by physicist and venture capitalist Yuri Milner and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who is serving as board member of Breakthrough Initiatives. Other board members include Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The project has an initial funding of $100 million to start research. Milner places the final mission cost at $5–10 billion, and estimates the first craft could launch about 20 years from now.

The Starshot concept envisions launching a “mothership” carrying about a thousand tiny spacecraft to a high-altitude orbit, and then deploying them one by one. Ground-based lasers would focus a light beam on their light sail to accelerate each individual craft to the target speed (1/5 the speed of light) within 10 minutes.