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.

Some theoreticians contemplate and formulate the physics of tachyons, which are hypothetical particles, that would always travel faster than light but which could never slow down to the speed of light just as they anticipate sublight speed massive particles never being able to achieve light speed. So my theoretical work on the physics and kinematics of light-speed massive systems sets me apart from general trends in the theoretical field of relativistic astronautics. This book is a continuation of how and why we may be able to, at some future time, travel at the speed of light.

The Next Step: Exponential Life presents essays on the potential of what are known as "exponential technologies"--those whose development is accelerating rapidly, such as robotics, artificial intelligence or industrial biology--considering their economic, social, environmental, ethical and even ontological implications. This book's premise is that humanity is at the beginning of a technological revolution that is evolving at a much faster pace than earlier ones--a revolution is so far-reaching it is destined to generate transformations we can only begin to imagine. Contributors include Aubrey D.N.J. de Grey, Jonathan Rossiter, Joseph A. Paradiso, Kevin Warwick, Huma Shah, Ramón López de Mántaras, Helen Papagiannis, Jay David Bolter, Maria Engberg, Robin Hanson, Stuart Russell, Darrell M. West, Francisco González, Chris Skinner, Steven Monroe Lipkin, S. Matthew Liao, James Giordano, Luciano Floridi, Seán Ó Héigeartaigh and Martin Rees.

Interstellar Travel: Propulsion, Life Support, Communications, and the Long Journey addresses the technical challenges that must be overcome to make such journeys possible. Leading experts in the fields of space propulsion, power, communication, navigation, crew selection, safety and health provide detailed information about state-of-the-art technologies and approaches for each challenge, along with possible methods based on real science and engineering. This book offers in-depth, up-to-date and realistic technical and scientific considerations in the pursuit of interstellar travel and will be an essential reference for scientists, engineers, researchers and academics working on, or interested in, space development and space technologies. With a renewed interest in space exploration and development evidenced by the rise of the commercial space sector and various governments now planning to send humans back to the moon and to Mars, there is also growing interest in taking the next steps beyond the solar system and to the ultimate destination – planets circling other stars. With the rapid growth in the number of known exoplanets, people are now asking how we might make journeys to visit them. Discusses the technical challenges that must be overcome to mount interstellar missions Features various aspects of interstellar travel by the world’s recognized leading experts in the field Provides referenceable data and analysis for both new and experienced researchers in the interstellar and deep-space exploration fields

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.

A collection of papers presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium held in Boston Feb. 15, 2002, this content considers the formidable technical issues and the social and "human" issues that will impact or be impacted by mankind's excursions to other star systems.