Most interstellar travel concepts require a developed space logistics system capable of moving millions of tonnes to a construction / operating location, and most would require gigawatt-scale power for construction or power (such as Star Wisp or Light Sail type concepts).

However, in spite of the challenges, if or when interstellar travel is realized, a wide range of scientific benefits are expected. Even the most optimistic views about interstellar travel see it as only being feasible decades from now. įor both crewed and uncrewed interstellar travel, considerable technological and economic challenges need to be met. Many different spacecraft propulsion systems have been proposed to give spacecraft the required speeds, including nuclear propulsion, beam-powered propulsion, and methods based on speculative physics. Ī number of strategies have been proposed to deal with these problems, ranging from giant arks that would carry entire societies and ecosystems, to microscopic space probes. Moreover, collisions by the spacecraft with cosmic dust and gas can be very dangerous for both passengers and the spacecraft itself. Even with a hypothetically perfectly efficient propulsion system, the kinetic energy corresponding to those speeds is enormous by today's standards of energy development. The speeds required for interstellar travel in a human lifetime far exceed what current methods of space travel can provide. Because of the vastness of those distances, practical interstellar travel based on known physics would need to occur at a high percentage of the speed of light even so, travel times would be long, at least decades and perhaps millennia or longer.

Whereas the distances between the planets in the Solar System are less than 30 astronomical units (AU), the distances between stars are typically hundreds of thousands of AU, and usually expressed in light-years. Interstellar travel would be much more difficult than interplanetary spaceflight. Interstellar travel refers to the currently theoretical idea of interstellar probes or crewed spacecraft moving between stars or planetary systems in a galaxy.

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