00:00As incredible as it may seem, there will be a time, and it may be closer than you
00:21think when we live on other worlds, the moon, Mars, and in the space between. And when that day comes,
00:31just as always, our children will look with curiosity across these new horizons with a
00:39desire to go further and to explore what lies beyond. But beyond Mars, the distances between
00:50worlds grow immensely, even within our own solar system, and become truly vast in between stars.
00:58If we ever want to reach out across these distances, we need to learn how to go fast.
01:14Using our current knowledge of physics and engineering,
01:19we could build nuclear locomotives to take humans to all the worlds in our solar system. But a starship
01:27powered with a nuclear heart aimed for even our closest star, Proxima Centauri, would have to
01:34harbor hundreds of generations of people, all living their entire lives aboard, before reaching its
01:40destination, four and a quarter light years away. It would take two years just to reach the orbit of
01:51Saturn, and another 2,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri. We need to be able to go faster.
02:01With our current knowledge of physics, but with engineering we have yet to develop, we can
02:17imagine a propulsion system with the sun for a heart. A fusion engine that could accelerate a starship up to
02:245% of the speed of light. This ship could cross the orbit of Saturn in six months, and reach Proxima Centauri in just over a century.
02:39But, if we want to traverse interstellar distances in less than a human lifetime, we have to go incredibly fast.
02:55The universe has shown us that this can be done by altering the scale of space itself. And we are working to develop new
03:03understandings of physics to learn how this might be controlled. If we could construct a starship with a
03:11propulsion system that decreases space in front of it, and expands space behind it, this ship could cross
03:21enormous distances, effectively faster than the speed of light.
03:27Such a ship would reach from Mars to Saturn in just a matter of minutes, and be able to reach Proxima Centauri
03:41in less than six months.
03:45From there, there are no limits to where we could go.
04:01Perhaps one day, humanity will look up at an alien night sky and strain to find the pale yellow dot that is our sun, our home,
04:13and know for the first time, as we look back on ourselves, that we are not alone in the universe.
04:23This journey starts today.
04:29,
04:39The
04:41,
04:49is
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