When I was a kid I took a field trip to Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana which had an observatory. During the field trip it was said that we could never travel faster than the speed of light. I was a Star Trek Next Generation fan so this was sole crushing to hear this because while I knew we couldn't go "warp" speed yet I felt that in the future we would figure it out. I complained about this to my dad when I got home from the field trip and he said something that was very true. NEVER is an awfully long time. He also said that is according to our understanding at this current time.
After all it wasn't until 1947 when we broke the sound barrier in a manned aircraft. And it wasn't until 2012 when Felix Baumgartner broke the sound barrier in just a space suit during the Red Bull Stratos project. We had no clue if these guys would just blow to pieces when they broke those barriers. Now we know!
As I studied more and more about space exploration growing up I was once again devastated to know that with our current rocket propulsion methods that it would take unacceptable amounts of time to get to the nearest star system Alpha Centauri which is 4.3 light years away.
At a maximum speed of about 17,600 mph, it would have taken a US Space Shuttle about 165,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri.
Yeah Unacceptable! NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft is now traveling at 0.006 percent of the speed of light. That type of velocity isn't a meaningful fraction of the speed of light compared to the vast distances of space. Even when utilizing gravity assist to sling a space craft at higher speeds it just isn't enough. I thought maybe I would never live to see interstellar travel. This was very sad to me.
One day earlier this year I read and article that made me believe again that we would conquer the vast distance sooner than later. It still wasn't going to be "Warp" speed or multiples of it but a considerable fraction of it.
20% - 25% The Speed of Light
The premise of the technology is that lasers that are either ground based or in orbit would then push spacecraft. Since space is relatively low friction the craft would accelerate. I'm assuming that once it reaches the desired speed then the laser can be turned off. This could be used to push supplies and people back and forth in our own solar system. Smaller probes can be sent to Mars in 3 days and I guess larger vehicles carrying people could take a month but that is a considerable time reduction in the 6-8 month journey our current technology would take us. Here is a must watch video from NASA explaining some of this. It makes a lot of sense and is super exciting.
Not only is NASA working on this but others such as Yuri Milner the Russian Billionaire and famed cosmologist Stephen Hawking along with Facebook Founder and Steemit "Frienemy" Mark Zuckerberg. They are apart of Breakthrough Starshot. Their goal is to send small nano-probes connected to a sail to Alpha Centauri. They would utilize ground based lasers probably in the high desert of Chile or a similar place. The goal would be to send pictures and readings back. I think one of the biggest problems to solve are that if you make the lasers ground based and not space based that our atmosphere could make it hard to place the laser properly on the sails that would be connected to the space craft. This might not be an issue at all though depending on the size of the sail. The premise of having a device in orbit that would shoot the laser doesn't make a lot of sense to me because if you are going to exert that much power to shoot the laser at the sail then there will most likely be an opposite reaction causing the orbit to get screwed up for the laser cannon. To me it would make sense to put it on the moon where there would be a solid base and no atmospheric issues to deal with. We would need to put a nuclear reactor up there to power it. With that setup it would seem that we could shoot tons of little mini probes all over our solar system and into the closest star systems which would accelerate our learning significantly. Here is a video explaining Breakthrough Starshot in more depth.
Conclusion
I have once again began to dream of the possibility that we will at least get pictures back of nearby star systems in my lifetime. NASA and the world's space agencies have done great things but for a long time now we have been pretty stagnant on flying faster both on Earth and in space. We also got stuck in low Earth orbit for many decades. 20 years ago I would have never imagined that we would still not have landed men and women on Mars by now. It is a tough problem to solve but we have the technology and brilliant minds to figure it out.
It just might be these private initiatives funded by billionaires that will push the boundaries and explore the unknown. What do you think Steemit?