Corvus
Feathered eyeball connoisseur
Our technology is limited but how about our science. Can anything travel faster than light? With the nearest planet according to the op 4.24 light years away. That means your in the transporter beam for quite a long time.
No thing can go faster than light, apart from hypothetical Tachyons, but if you can construct a stable wormhole, between two points in the universe, wide enough to pass a spaceship through, you won't have to worry about light speed. Although I am not sure how you build a functional wormhole big enough, Michio Kaku might.
Time dilation effects mean that passengers traveling close to light speed will experience a significantly shorter passage of time, relative to those on planet Earth.Even in Star Trek they were directly above the planet when they used the beam. If you used a rover type vehicle to explore, you are still talking 4.24 years before communications say to change course.
This simple equation is used for calculating the time dilation experienced by a moving object.
t = t0/(1-v2/c2)1/2
t = time observed in the other reference frame
t0 = time in observers own frame of reference (rest time)
v = the speed of the moving object
c = the speed of light in a vacuum
So if you were to travel the 4.3 light years to Alpha Centuri, if you could travel at say between 97-99% the speed of light, it would appear to an Earth bound observer you have taken over 4.3 years to get there. However from your observation point on board the ship, with a time dilation factor of around 8, the ships's clocks would record that just over 6 months has passed.
EDIT I think I misread your post and responded unnecessarily, you don't need remote control Rovers, Autonomous Robots will do nicely.
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