The exact destination star has not been identified yet, but either way the task poses some daunting challenges. Only one man made object has ever left our solar system. The Voyager 1 space probe is now around 9,200 billion miles away from earth, which might seem like a long way off, but is not much beyond the edge of the solar system. Voyager was launched in 1977 and has been travelling at 37,500 miles per hour ever since. It has taken around 30 years just to reach the edge of our solar system.
Aside from the obvious question of propulsion, there are other issues of food, water and general well being of the travellers. What’s more, assuming faster than light travel is not possible, even ambitious calculations put travel time around 70 years, meaning that one generation will start the voyage, but another will finish it. This adds a whole new dimension to the travel plans.
But NASA is fairly confident they can conquer this challenge, and they base their confidence on history. A little over 100 years ago, cars had just starting to replace horses as the primary means of transport, and manned flight was still a dream. Explaining to somebody back then that, some day, man would leave the planet and walk on the moon would have garnered you a small padded cell and a comfy white jacket.
NASA claim that if we got from horse drawn carriage to manned space flight in under 100 years, and given the ever increasing rate of technology innovation, their target is perfectly achievable.
They could just be right.
