Nuclear pulse propulsion[1] was deemed doable with 1960's technology and can accelerate several hundred tons of payload enough to reach the nearest stars in a couple of generations. This doesn't require any magic, just lots of money and nukes.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_pulse_propulsion

It also requires:

1) the ability to avoid debris at those speeds (which would obliterate the ship) 2) to survive radiation, 3) the nearest stars to be of value life-support wise, 4) a couple of generations to pass, 5) us not to hear back from the mission for years upon arrival,

So, a more far-fetched version of solar system exploration, with the next steps even further...

Did you expect it to be easier than solar system exploration or what? The engineering problems have plausible solutions: You'd need a lot of water anyway so a shield of ice can handle debris, the ice, together with the ship's own mass, also shields radiation quite a bit.

This is pretty different from a "fairy tale" and not addressed at all by the blog posts you used as arguments.

Unless you are moving at near light-speed, where a proton is already a problem, debris do mostly not exist in space. If you want to reach one, you'll have to target, and even then it's hard.

Hello I just wanted to say that out of the infinite numerical odds of you not existing, you are sentient, alive, breathing, and sharing someone’s journal, human.

“If u breathin u achievin”

  ㅓㅁ.먀 - ㅌ

>Hello I just wanted to say out of the incredible numerical odds of you not existing, you are sentient, alive, breathing, and sharing someone’s journal.

Numerical odds are not the same as laws of nature like e.g. the speed of light or the economics of the energy required and so on. Odds are quite low to win the lottery too, but someone always does. Few have travelled faster than the speed of light though (superman comes to mind), or any other of the many physical limitations to overcome.

And the fact that we went from carriages to planes doesn't guarantee any continuous growth to interstellar travel. Not the fact that we're "ingenious" (whatever that means) or that we "really want it".

Plus, I'm not even sure about the odds being that low (for all we know life can also be easy to develop over time as long as they have some basic conditions, similar to which we know tons of planets in the universe to have).

But sure, no actual on-topic arguments needed, whatever keeps the faith alive...

The irony is being alive and breathing are impediments to traveling the galaxy. Sentience is kind of a hassle when you have long spans of travel time, as well.

I agree with this entirely. I don't think we will be jumping in starships and shooting ourselves all over the universe.

I think some form of self replicating technology we create will be dispatched en masse into the universe where it will float around for millions of years relying as much on probability as anything and blindly utilise resources as it goes. It will have no intelligence, just programmed to reproduce itself. And we will be the scurge of the universe.

I don't think 5-10k years is a major risk and doesn't require interstellar travel. I think we have closer problems on the horizon to deal with.

Hey, we already doing interstellar travel. At some point, we will reach an another star and even another galaxy (Andromeda).

Also, there is lot of planet size bodies between us and nearest stars. I expect 10 planets with mass of Jupiter between Solar system and Alpha Centaur system, or 1000 planets with mass of Earth. We can colonize them one by one.

Why??? Why downvoted? What wrong with this site?