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Asked by mendelev69 to Jack, Jon, Tom, Yalda on 17 Mar 2013.
Question: do you think that in the future interstellar travel (between stars) will be possible?
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Tom Branson answered on 15 Mar 2013:
It is hard to say. I don’t think this will be really possible for a very long time, if ever. The nearest star to us (apart from the sun) is Alpha Centauri.
This star is 4.2 light years away. A light year is the distance it takes light to travel in one year. Light can travel round the Earth 7.4 times every second, so you can see that this is a very very big distance!
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Jack Heal answered on 17 Mar 2013:
I’d like to say yes, but really I don’t think it will be. I’ll definitely say that unfortunately we won’t be alive long enough to see it happen. The distances are too far and so the journeys would take aaaaaages. It would also be incredibly expensive. Let’s just hope we get to Mars in our lifetime. Sorry for the depressing answer!
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anon answered on 17 Mar 2013:
Knowing my luck, I pick a star that was dead. While we can see it on earth – as the light takes AGES to get here (as Tom explain) – it might not still exist in space. How annoying would that be – spending several lifetimes trying to get to get somewhere only to have to turn around and come straight back home.
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Jon Marles-Wright answered on 17 Mar 2013:
I read loads of Sci-fi, so I’ve seen lots of ways that writers get round the problem of interstellar travel. Some solutions just aren’t based on real science, like warp-drive and hyperspace, others seem pretty realistic. My favourite description of how the problem of interstellar travel could be solved is in books by Alastair Reynolds (Who used to work at CERN, before he became a writer).
In his books humans build long space ships and cover them with thick layers of diamond and ice to protect the hull and occupants from radiation and interstellar dust. The ships have fusion drives that accelerate constantly, eventually getting very close to the speed of light. Even this is a bit unlikely.
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