Rene Heller (rené Heller), a physicist from the German max Planck Institute for Solar System research, believes that mankind will be able to reach the closest 10 stars in a hundred years. Heller is confident that scientists and ingenery will be able to develop engines able to accelerate to 0.2 of light speed in the next 45 years.
This is the conclusion he came to after analyzing the data for 200 years — the study showed that the growth speed of vehicles (from simple steam engines to the modern station Voyager 1) humanity is about 4,72% per year.