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Asked by malcomzz to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 20 Nov 2013.
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Simon Langley-Evans answered on 20 Nov 2013:
Malcolmzz
Not using the kinds of spacecraft we have at the moment. To achieve interstellar travel we would need something that can travel a lot lot faster. You may have heard recently about the Voyager probe. This is a spacecraft from the 1970s which has only just after 40 years become the first spacecraft to leave the solar system. It is now in interstellar space, but even if it was travelling in the right direction (which it isn’t) would still take thousands of years to reach Alpha Centauri (the nearest star).
Even if we could travel at the speed of light it would take about 5 years to get to our closest neighbouring star.
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Susan Skelton answered on 21 Nov 2013:
Hi malcomzz – tricky question!
I am super excited about space travel! But unfortunately, at the moment, our very fastest spacecrafts don’t go fast enough to allow us to reach the nearest galaxy in a human lifetime.
Using the rockets we have available at the moment, it would take a minimum of 19,000 years to reach Alpha Centauri, the next nearest star to our solar system. So that’s about the lifetimes of 240 people! That means that by the time our spacecraft arrived at Alpha Centauri, the astronauts inside would have been dead for about 18,920 years!
That’s clearly not much use; we need to develop a rocket that will arrive within one person’s lifetime, say about 80 years.
The very fastest that we could ever travel is the speed of light and at that speed it would take a little over 4 years to get there. So if we could make spacecraft that could travel close to the speed of light then we could go there and back in a decade!
Scientists are looking into a new way to power rockets using controlled nuclear explosions to provide lots and lots of power to push the rocket forward. If they are successful, they think we might be able to reach Alpha Centauri in 85 years – which is just about the average length of a human lifetime.
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