How Humanity Can Travel Incredibly Fast In Space Explored

Space.com

Limitless Space Institute compares the travel time of spacecraft propelled by nuclear power to that of imaginative fusion propulsion.  Credit: Limitless Space Institute

Transcript

00:00 [Music]

00:15 As incredible as it may seem, there will be a time, and it may be closer than you think,

00:22 when we live on other worlds, the Moon, Mars, and in the space between.

00:30 And when that day comes, just as always, our children will look with curiosity across these

00:38 new horizons with a desire to go further and to explore what lies beyond.

00:47 But beyond Mars, the distances between worlds grow immensely, even within our own solar system,

00:55 and become truly vast in between stars.

01:00 If we ever want to reach out across these distances, we need to learn how to go fast.

01:07 [Music]

01:16 Using our current knowledge of physics and engineering, we could build nuclear locomotives

01:21 to take humans to all the worlds in our solar system.

01:26 But a starship powered with a nuclear heart, aimed for even our closest star, Proxima Centauri,

01:33 would have to harbor hundreds of generations of people, all living their entire lives aboard,

01:40 before reaching its destination, four and a quarter light years away.

01:48 It would take two years just to reach the orbit of Saturn,

01:53 and another 2,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri.

01:58 We need to be able to go faster.

02:02 [Music]

02:11 With our current knowledge of physics, but with engineering we have yet to develop,

02:16 we can imagine a propulsion system with a sun for a heart,

02:21 a fusion engine that could accelerate a starship up to 5% of the speed of light.

02:27 [Music]

02:31 This ship could cross the orbit of Saturn in six months,

02:36 and reach Proxima Centauri in just over a century.

02:41 But if we want to traverse interstellar distances in less than a human lifetime,

02:48 we have to go incredibly fast.

02:52 [Music]

02:56 The universe has shown us that this can be done by altering the scale of space itself,

03:02 and we are working to develop new understandings of physics to learn how this might be controlled.

03:09 If we could construct a starship with a propulsion system that decreases space in front of it,

03:16 and expands space behind it,

03:19 this ship could cross enormous distances effectively faster than the speed of light.

03:27 [Music]

03:32 Such a ship would reach from Mars to Saturn in just a matter of minutes,

03:39 and be able to reach Proxima Centauri in less than six months.

03:44 [Music]

03:52 From there, there are no limits to where we could go.

03:58 [Music]

04:02 Perhaps one day, humanity will look up at an alien night sky,

04:08 and strain to find the pale yellow dot that is our sun, our home,

04:14 and know for the first time as we look back on ourselves, that we are not alone in the universe.

04:23 This journey starts today.

04:27 [Music]

04:33 [Music fades]

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