I’ve seen people succeed a hundred times… in movies. So what about in real life?
We’re excited to find planets that could support life, both inside and outside the Solar System. We want to find the answer to “Is man alone in the Universe?”. Everyone wonders what the next step in finding life is, will we visit them, will they visit us, or will they never get a chance to meet?
On Quora, someone hypothesized that if we see a planet 1 light year away and there are people on it, how long will it take to get there with them using current technology?
James Swingland, possessing a bachelor of science degree in physics, a PhD in computer biologist, with two years of experience in data science, answered the question.
With current technology, humans will not be able to reach the planet 1 light year away from us.
The farthest artificial probe ever traveled was only 0.2% light-years, taking up to 40 years to make the “short” distance, 2/1000 light years in 40 years. Before it reaches its final destination, round 1 light-year, the ship will decay over time and due to collisions with Cosmic dust.
With current technology, we can make the craft a little faster, but it’s still just a probe, can’t carry people.
To carry astronauts on a flight, a ship large enough with life support, food and power to operate the ship is needed. Unlike a probe, a ship carrying people would need fuel, a lot of fuel.
Hibernation technology can bring humans to another planet intact, but we do not possess this advanced technology yet.
We will not be able to travel 1 light-year in just one human lifetime, humanity has not yet possessed the freezing technology that allows humans to sleep for a few hundred years. To solve this problem, we will need a very large ship with room for several generations of people. The complexity of the trip will increase much, as more people, from multiple generations join. Social conflict will be inevitable.
Just creating an isolated living environment that fully meets everyone’s needs is a big challenge. Current technology can hardly meet difficult needs.
In the past, there was an experimental program called the Biosphere 2 project, with the aim of maintaining a small-scale terrestrial habitat with all the necessary elements. The testing process is rife with failures, both in the ecosystem and in the social factors. The project’s time record is only 2 years, not enough for a light-year journey.
There will certainly be other problems that arise, which we cannot foresee.
Maybe in the next few years there will be a breakthrough: the Breakthrough Starshot project intends to use the power of lasers to send a probe to Alpha Centauri 4.37 light-years away. It is expected to reach 20% the speed of light and travel in only 20 years, but again: this is a probe, designed to be as light as possible. The project of taking people to light distances is still a “fiction”.
There are ambitions similar to the Orion project, which uses atomic bombs to propel rockets forward; travel time will be shortened to several decades. However, using bombs to push the train to the “neighbor’s house” doesn’t sound reasonable, maybe it will be a provocative act, the beginning of a space war.
Even when finding clean, efficient engines, they are only effective up to a certain limit. The trip will still last several decades, and who knows what other problems will arise over the decades.
Check out the technologies that have the potential to be introduced to other star systems, including:
Fusion energy, the potential clean technology of the future. It can let us fly faster, provide power on board for the whole trip, but it’s “coming out” for several decades now.
Antimatter is also a possible way out of the energy problem. But storing antimatter is extremely difficult; With current technology, we can’t store enough antimatter to sustain a full light-year trip. Even creating enough antimatter to go is already impossible.
With luck, people in the future will have answers, but this prediction will deviate from the focus of the question, which revolves around “current technology”.
Humans haven’t evolved far enough to experience light-years.