Monday, March 31, 2014

Space Travel (part 1)


It is easy for us to look out into the stars and imagine traveling to other worlds, but realistically, it would take years with our current technology to even leave the solar system. Consider that Voyager reached the edge of our solar system in 35 years. If we wanted to go further and travel 4.3 light years to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, it could take 81,000 years. That's the slow method, using ion thrusters, but other forms of propulsion, such as a gravitational slingshot, could reduce the time to only 19,000 years. Is it realistic at all for us to hope to travel the stars someday? If science fiction has taught us anything, it should be clear that we're barking up the wrong tree if we hope to become interstellar explorers using these methods. This week, we'll discuss some possible alternative forms of space travel.

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