Exotic possibilities

Abstract

A review of the preceding chapters will reveal that something is wrong with all approaches to interstellar flight that could be pursued using existing or foreseeable technology. Solar sails are feasible, but millennium-long travel times present problems for human science teams or peopled ships. Nuclear-pulse is technically feasible and perhaps a little faster, but how do you sell the world public on the prospect of storing large amounts of weapon-grade nuclear or thermonuclear material in near-Earth space during ship construction? Antimatter is technologically suitable and potentially very fast, but it is also very expensive. Only the slower ramjet alternatives such as the runway might prove feasible in the near term, and these might require many decades of preparation before a starship is launched. And the laser light sail (perhaps the current favourite, according to Frisbee and Leifer) requires not only the technical capability to beam a laser or maser over trillions of kilometres with a beam drift and accuracy measured in hundreds of kilometres, but also the continued terrestrial support for the mission during the decades-long or century-long acceleration process.

‘The time has come,’ the walrus said

‘To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings.’

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass (1871)