Any point to interstellar probes now we have the solar lens concept?

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was excited about the Breakthrough Starshot initiative; a project to fire a tiny probe to the next star system. It would take decades to get there, or more than a human lifetime if we want it to enter into orbit when it arrives. But, what ya gonna do, stars are wicked far apart, yo.

…However, now we have the concept of using the sun as a gravitational lens telescope (the concept isn’t new, but AIUI, the algorithms to be able to compute high-res images from the hall-of-mirrors lensing effect is new).
So we can travel only a fraction of a percent of the distance to alpha cen, and yet hypothetically image planets (plural) that are much further away.

I am aware that this is not a done deal by any means – a solar gravitational lens telescope array would require multiple huge scientific and engineering breakthroughs, and actually has a number of annoying limitations. But the same could be said of an interstellar probe.

(I thought about putting this in GD, but I’m not sure there’s much of a debate to be had)

2

Any interstellar probes we send now would be overtaken by the probes we send in the future. But at some point that won’t be the case. And I think it would be worth doing because a probe could surely study things that a super-powerful telescope could not. And I also presume that using the sun to magnify images would have it’s limitations. Not least only being able to study things in the plane of our orbit.

I suppose you could solve that by putting a telescope array out in space so it’s positioned where you want it, but at that point why not fly to a much bigger star and use that?