Sci-fi novels, movies, and TV shows have provided ideas on how interstellar space travel might be accomplished, allowing humans to travel far beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Many of these ideas are being explored by scientists today. In this enlightening book, readers learn about how human interstellar travel might be accomplished and how STEM skills are being used to solve the problems involved. Human interstellar space travel raises a variety of ethical questions as well, such as who goes on this one-way trip, traveling far from home for years or even generations? This resource provides a human and technical overview of a captivating, yet contentious, topic.

I wrote this book because I wanted to learn more about interstel lar flight. Not the Star Trek notion of tearing around the Galaxy in a huge spaceship-that was obviously beyond existing tech nology-but a more realistic mission. In 1989 I had videotaped Voyager 2's encounter with Neptune and watched the drama of robotic exploration over and over again. I started to wonder whether we could do something similar with Alpha Centauri, the nearest star to the Sun. Everyone seemed to agree that manned flight to the stars was out of the question, if not permanently then for the indefinitely foreseeable future. But surely we could do something with robotics. And if we could figure out a theoretical way to do it, how far were we from the actual technology that would make it happen? In other words, what was the state of our interstellar technology today, those concepts and systems that might translate into a Voyager to the stars? Finding answers meant talking to people inside and outside of NASA. I was surprised to learn that there is a large literature of interstellar flight. Nobody knows for sure how to propel a space craft fast enough to make the interstellar crossing within a time scale that would fit the conventional idea of a mission, but there are candidate systems that are under active investigation. Some of this effort begins with small systems that we'll use near the Earth and later hope to extend to deep space missions.

The technology of the next few decades could possibly allow us to explore with robotic probes the closest stars outside our Solar System, and maybe even observe some of the recently discovered planets circling these stars. This book looks at the reasons for exploring our stellar neighbors and at the technologies we are developing to build space probes that can traverse the enormous distances between the stars. In order to reach the nearest stars, we must first develop a propulsion technology that would take our robotic probes there in a reasonable time. Such propulsion technology has radically different requirements from conventional chemical rockets, because of the enormous distances that must be crossed. Surprisingly, many propulsion schemes for interstellar travel have been suggested and await only practical engineering solutions and the political will to make them a reality. This is a result of the tremendous advances in astrophysics that have been made in recent decades and the perseverance and imagination of tenacious theoretical physicists. This book explores these different propulsion schemes – all based on current physics – and the challenges they present to physicists, engineers, and space exploration entrepreneurs. This book will be helpful to anyone who really wants to understand the principles behind and likely future course of interstellar travel and who wants to recognizes the distinctions between pure fantasy (such as Star Trek’s ‘warp drive’) and methods that are grounded in real physics and offer practical technological solutions for exploring the stars in the decades to come.

Sci-fi novels, movies, and TV shows have provided ideas on how interstellar space travel might be accomplished, allowing humans to travel far beyond the Milky Way galaxy. Many of these ideas are being explored by scientists today. In this enlightening book, readers learn about how human interstellar travel might be accomplished and how STEM skills are being used to solve the problems involved. Human interstellar space travel raises a variety of ethical questions as well, such as who goes on this one-way trip, traveling far from home for years or even generations? This resource provides a human and technical overview of a captivating, yet contentious, topic.

The story of the men and women who drove the Voyager spacecraft mission— told by a scientist who was there from the beginning. --Publisher

This book weaves together essays by twenty-five noted scholars from the social and space sciences which examine the human as well as the technological side of our future beyond Earth.

"The Starflight Handbook is an compendium of the many and varied methods for traversing the vast interstellar gulf."--Publisher.

Louis Friedman, Executive Director of the Planetary Society, presents the first comprehensive look at the science and history behind solar sailing and other designs for space travel. Serious science readers and space buffs alike will be fascinated by designs for the square sail, disk sail, and the heliogyro (which features flexible sails many kilometers long). Friedman compares solar sailing to other proposed propulsion sytems such as ion drives and laser propulsion, and takes an insider's look at the million-dollar JPL project of the late '70s, which was the first attempt at a working model. Illustrated.

Arthur C. Clarke was renowned for his science fiction, but his understanding of the subject was more than imagined. First published in 1951, this painstakingly-researched non-fiction book shows the depth of Clarke's expertise - he predicts the moon landings nearly two decades before they occurred, explores the potential use of satellites for communications more than ten years before Telstar 1 was put into orbit, and goes on to discuss the potential of space stations and long range orbital telescopes. Informed by interviews with the foremost scientists and engineers of the time, Clarke presents his thesis for how man will explore space . . . and the reader can measure his predictions against reality. 'He was a great visionary, a brilliant science fiction writer and a great forecaster. He foresaw communications satellites, a nationwide network of computers, interplanetary travel; he said there would be a man on the moon by 1970, while I said 1980' - and he was right' Sir Patrick Moore

Aboard the Glacier -- Problem child -- The convict -- Light fuse, get away -- New moon -- Let's make a deal -- The creators and the makers -- Storming the Sea of Dreams -- Moving at the speed of design -- Job number MA-11 -- The science and the cyclist -- Get off the bus -- Swing in time -- The meeting and the mechta -- Think like gravity -- Didn't they get it? -- The death and the funeral -- One hundred percent failure -- Three-problem Shipley -- Pete and Al's little field trip -- Irradiated plans -- Embarking -- Get it -- Instant science -- Circles of gold -- Last light -- Continuum. Winner of the 2009 Emme Award.