Journey to the Stars

Abstract

Will mankind ever be able to visit the stars and other planetary systems? The dream has been alive since early man looked at a sparkling star-filled sky for the first time, many thousands of years ago. There is good reason to believe that in a few decades we will be capable of colonising planets and moons in our own solar system in earnest, as well as taking advantage of opportunities like mining the asteroids. We do not see any direct show-stoppers for this progress, at least not in terms of the technology required. To reach for the stars is, however, quite another matter. A simple comparison between interplanetary and interstellar distances shows that it is about 260,000 times farther to the nearest star than to our Sun! To bridge such a distance with manned or unmanned spacecraft currently seems like an insurmountable task. Nonetheless, during the last decades studies have been made to more closely examine the challenge and to try to find technical solutions.