1) Impossible-what most scientists think. The energy required can be thought of in three ways. It is an extremely hard problem, for two primary reasons-the enormous energy required to drive far and fast, and the vast amount of time it takes to get anywhere even at high speed. So this last year a number of researchers and visionaries have begun formal investigation into the practicalities of getting beyond our own solar system. If we can master interstellar travel, "there’s someplace to go." Our own solar system is pretty boring-one planet is habitable, the rest are "like Antarctica without ice" or worse. We now know, Schwartz began, that nearly all of the billions of stars in our galaxy have planets. The new book from the project, Starship Century: Toward the Grandest Horizon, will be available at the event. Schwartz’s SALT talk will report on the exciting work by the 19 participants and spell out the logics of his scenarios. Even by widely divergent paths, it looks like a near certainty. To his surprise, exploring the scenarios suggested that getting effective star travel over the coming century or two is not a long shot. The professional futurist in the group was Peter Schwartz, who contributed scenarios playing out four futures of starship ambitions. Participants included scientists such as Freeman Dyson and Martin Rees and writers such as Gregory Benford and Neal Stephenson. “The 100-year Starship” is the name of now-culminating project that mustered a handful of scientists and science fiction writers to contemplate how humanity might, over the coming century, realistically develop the ability to escape our Solar System and travel the light years to others. At first glance we can never span those light years. There is an appalling distance between here and the countless planets we’re discovering around stars other than our Sun.
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