I have been studying the concept of laser driven light sails for interstellar travel, and find the idea interesting, would you all be interested in a collaborative debate on what the benifits and limitations of such a system is? I work with lasers, and love the idea of space travel, and have done a few calculations on the subject.... but I am not up to date on materials science, or aeronautics...

what I do have is free access to hundreds of journals on the web so I will be happy to research them to help the collaborative speculation along....

I feel that the best chance for the initial interstellar probe is the use of lasers and light sails.... we will not see it in our life time but we can determine how it will it happen in speculation.

as a starter on speculation....
http://std.msfc.nasa.gov/ast/advpropconf01.html

Go to #3 which is "Return to Revolutionary Propulsion Research