However, all experimentation with this so-called nuclear-pulse propulsion came to a halt with the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963.Īnnounced earlier this year, the ambitious Breakthrough StarShot initiative represents a less explosive effort to undertake an interstellar mission.
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Unauthorized use is prohibited.īlueprints were also created showing how to adapt the technology for interstellar travel.
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A controlled series of nuclear explosions would propel the ship at high speeds, rapidly carrying a hundred tons of cargo and eight astronauts to places like Mars and even the outer solar system. Still, various teams have proposed ways to at least reach a fraction of light speed and hasten our exploration of interstellar space.īack in 1958, researchers at San Diego-based defense contractor General Atomics came up with Project Orion, which involved a spacecraft driven essentially by nuclear bombs. At that rate, it would take more than 70,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri. Right now, the fastest spacecraft headed away from Earth is Voyager 1, which is puttering along at about 38,600 miles an hour. That may seem pokey, but it would be a huge improvement over current technology. The closest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 4.23 light-years away, so even traveling at the speed of light, a one-way voyage there would take 4.23 years. A single light-year equals about six trillion miles. “Being able to build starships with the capability to travel faster than the speed of light would open the galaxy for exploration and possible colonization by humans.” Nuclear Enginesĭistances in space are so vast that astronomers usually measure them in light-years, the distance light can travel in a year’s time. “Currently, even the most advanced ideas behind interstellar travel entail trip times of decades and centuries to even the closest stars, due to the restrictions of special relativity, and our abilities-or lack of-to travel at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light,” says Richard Obousy, director and founder of Icarus Interstellar, a nonprofit dedicated to making progress toward interstellar flight. While current rocket propulsion systems are bound by this law, plenty of hopeful engineers and physicists are working on concepts that might bring us a step closer to Star Trek’s vision of racing across the cosmos. Such rapid travel times are impossible in the real world, because our best theory for the way the universe works, Einstein’s special relativity, says that nothing moves faster than the speed of light. This fictional technology allows humans and other civilizations to zoom between star systems in days rather than centuries. Within the Star Trek universe, traveling across the galaxy is a breeze thanks to the famed warp drive.
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