from Hacker News

Can we build a Starship with our current technology in the next 10 years?

by galazzah on 9/7/16, 7:32 AM with 4 comments

  • by informatimago on 9/7/16, 9:40 AM

    YES.

    Remember that the only condition for a star ship, is to be able to have thrust all the time. Even a very small thrust is enough to reach relativistic speeds, and therefore make the travel-time human-scale. FOR THE TRAVELERS!

    Now, the problem is that unless the travelers include the trillionaire that will finance the projects, nobody will want to finance a travel, where the travellers reach the destination after their dead, and can give back news only after the payers' children are dead.

    But travelling one year on board to reach Proxima Centauri (4 light years away) wouldn't even be tiring for the traveller.

    (Ok, perhaps we could pay for this destination, after all, we'd get news about landing ten years later).

  • by shams93 on 9/7/16, 7:57 AM

    We've already sent 5 unmanned probes meant for interstellar space, one of them Voyager 1 is in interstellar space. Sending actual people is a tremendously hard thing to do, sending probes is much easier, we already have they're just moving so slowly it will probably take 300 years to reach Alpha Centauri.