George Sowers, professor of practice in the space resources program at Colorado School of Mines, was recently featured in a CNET article about Breakthrough Starshot, an initiative that aims to send hundreds of tiny spacecraft to the Alpha Centauri star system to examine planets for signs of life. Starshot proposes to use a giant Earth-based laser array to shoot the nearly weightless "nanocraft" to Alpha Centauri — at 134 million miles per hour. From the article: Starshot's laser gets around a big problem with the rockets we've been using to explore space. Rockets carry their own fuel, so they ....