Ah. You see, the issues with a hypercorp trying to colonize Alpha Centauri are manifold, but it all boils down to: Too Damn Far Away. Slower Than Light (STL) seed-ships, with a bunch of stored egos, a few CMs and a big library, and stored genetic material are completely within the realm of the setting. In fact, at least one ship (the ICS-201 CRYSTAL WIND, Rimward, pg 145) is on its way to Barnard's Star. The reason it hasn't been done before by the hypercorps is that it isn't a good investment. A colony that's at the end of an eight year command and control loop isn't a money-maker under just about any circumstances, and that's ignoring the fact that it would take literally decades for the ship to even arrive. Even using the most powerful engines available, anti-matter rockets, isn't cost-effective. Anti-matter rockets are dangerous, expensive and require a fuel that is rather hard to replenish mid-voyage (and, of course, the more matter you're accelerating, the more of that expensive fuel you need). And, even then, at the 0.2 G that anti-matter rockets are capable of, it takes nearly ten years of continuous acceleration, turnover and deceleration (with speed at turnover of 0.9 C!) to arrive--at the cost of enough anti-matter to accelerate the entire seed ship, plus half of its fuel, up to 0.9 C and then back down again. With plasma rockets, it takes nearly 45 years (with continuous acceleration, turnover and deceleration), and with fusion rockets, it takes nearly 20 years (same). So, it's not that such a feat is outside of the technical realm of transhumanity--it just isn't worth the investment of money and time to a capitalistic society. Look at it this way: right now, in 2013, we have the technical capability to have a moonbase of 2000 people, or a high speed tunnel across the Atlantic from New York to London. Why haven't we built these engineering marvels, then? Because, socially, our priorities are directed elsewhere, or we have more cost-effective means available.