Interstellar Travel

If we ever acheive interstellar travel (ie to travel between stars and systems) how do you think the crafts will work and how fast do you think they will go?

I think that the first ones will be based on the idea of gravifugal force for space, with rockets for manouvering on/off and away from planets. I think, though, that the first craft will take many decades to reach the nearest star system, and then the radio signal, or their return would also take many years - and thanks to the Twin Paradox and the fact that there is no universal clock our Earth will probably be a good couple of centuries on since they first left.
Oxygen will be maintained by keeping plants onboard, or the crew will survive by being frozen or 'preserved'.

Any other ideas or thoughts?

I'd agree with the gravitational drive method. That way we could accelerate to near the speed of light, and quickly. Of course there is no technology to do this currently, but it what we would need for interstellar travel.

As for Oxygen, food, and water, we would need something that would turn our waste back into useable materials. Something that can molecularly rearange CO2, into Carbon and Oxygen, same thing for human waste, filter out the water, then molecularly rearange the solid waste back into a suitable food. Using plants or a Biosphere type thing would be to fragile for longterm space travel.

As for the people on board, i would say either a form of stasis or just live on the ship so that future generation can reach the destination.

Any long distance interstellar travel would have to be more of a traveling mini-world more than just a vehicle to go from one point to anoher.

I honestly think humans, if we survive long enough, will have a mean of travel we can't even contemplate yet.

short term the grav drive seems like the way to do it

i think long term its more likely we would exploit worm hole type stuff to "jump" from place to place.

i like the recycle of waste idea, and i think we are actually closer to getting that then we are of getting to the point where we can even talk about going from star to star.

I see more in the idea of ion drives. They're available now and are much easier and would have much less energy cost than extraordinary theorical ideas like wormholes.

Could you explain the idea of an ion drive?

Originally posted by TheRenegade
Could you explain the idea of an ion drive?

This link explains it quite well

science.nasa.gov...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

www.abovetopsecret.com...

Plenty of threads cover this topic on the board. Search for 'prometheus' or 'ion drive' etc. Or google for the same.