Comment by adrian_b
16 days ago
Alpha Centauri is a triple star, even if it is not the kind of three body system depicted in that story (mainly because one of the 3 stars is much smaller than the other 2, so it orbits stably around them like a very big and distant planet).
While the triple star Alpha Centauri does not have mass ratios between its stars that are compatible with the story plot, I think that ignoring this technical detail is a much less serious plot hole than those of the majority of the non-fantastic Hollywood movies, which are supposed to happen in the real world, but they still contain a lot of impossible actions.
Proxima orbits at a great distance from the inner pair of stars, around their center of mass. Proxima is also a small red dwarf star. This layout had to have been well-known by the time the book was written.
This is perhaps similar to the pursuit of "unobtainium" in Avatar.
Both just seem lazy.