In 1981, he and Gregory Matloff wrote a classic paper about using solar sails to reach Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to our sun.
Early on, Firaxis has produced several PC games, including Sid Meier's Gettysburg! and Sid Meier's Antietam!, based on their namesake famous American Civil War battles, and Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a space colonization game taking place in the Alpha Centauri star system.
If it were not for the effects of diffraction, a 2" aperture telescope could theoretically be used to read newspapers on a planet circling Alpha Centauri, over four light-years distant.
The split infinitive, specifically its famous use in the Star Trek opening sequence, is the basis of a joke from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "In those days men were real men, women were real women, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before — and thus was the Empire forged."
(There have been suggestions that Bracken was referring to Alpha Centauri, the very bright triple star in the Milky Way, visible only in the Southern Hemisphere. That is impossible because Proxima Centauri, the third star in Alpha Centauri, was not discovered until 1915, some 49 years after Bracken wrote his anthem.)
His ship, Odysseus I, was not equipped for faster-than-light speed; hence the journey to Earth's nearest interstellar neighbor, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, would take about 10 centuries.
Alpha Phi Alpha | Sigma Alpha Epsilon | Kappa Alpha Psi | Alpha | Phi Mu Alpha Sinfonia | Pi Kappa Alpha | Alpha Blondy | Piper Alpha | Alpha Delta Phi | Alpha Centauri | alpha | Sigma Alpha Mu | Kappa Alpha Theta | ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 | Alpha Video | Alpha Kappa Alpha | Alpha Epsilon Pi | Sony Alpha | Kappa Alpha Society | Zeta Tau Alpha | Sigma Alpha Iota | Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri | Lambda Chi Alpha | Kappa Alpha Order | Alpha TV | Alpha Group | Alpha Gamma Rho | Alpha Bank | Wolfram Alpha | TGF alpha |
Sid Meier's turn-based franchise Civilization and its spin-off Alpha Centauri obscure parts of the map not occupied by the player or allies until the advent of orbital flight is reached by the player.
Martinex escaped the Badoon using a telepod and teamed with Vance Astro, a human astronaut from the 20th century with psychic powers, Charlie-27, a Jovian who was the last of his race as well, and Yondu, from Alpha Centauri, to fight the Badoon as the freedom fighters, the Guardians of the Galaxy.
Asimov here is drawing attention to an astronomical curio: the nearest star system to Sol contains a star that has the same spectral type, G2 V, though Alpha Centauri A is a little larger and brighter.