A Traveler?s Guide to the Stars

The discovery in the last few decades of thousands of exoplanets orbiting nearby stars has made the age-old dream of interstellar travel a newly urgent scientific question. Initiatives like NASA's 100-Year Starship and the billionaire-funded Breakthrough Starshot are now investigating and developing new technologies that could one day enable humans to explore, perhaps even colonize, distant solar systems. This short, accessible book brings readers to the forefront of this new frontier, laying out both the challenges to be navigated and the latest thinking and scientific developments that could allow us to overcome them. NASA scientist Les Johnson begins by surveying the vast, hostile landscape between stars we'll need to traverse: an extremely cold, mysterious expanse rife with harsh radiation and cosmic dust. He describes our first sallies into this sphere with forerunners like the Voyager craft, now well on their way into the interstellar medium, and new extrasolar probes currently being planned that will venture farther beyond our solar system and launch within our lifetimes. He next considers who our interstellar explorers will be-first robots, followed by humans-and what each will entail, before delving into the mind-boggling science of how one would actually propel an interstellar starship. Johnson explains the most promising approaches, from antimatter-powered rockets to the light-filled sails scientists like himself are piloting now, and discusses other design challenges to be overcome like power and communications. The book closes with a chapter exploring the real science of sci-fi and pop culture fixtures like warp drives and wormholes, and a conclusion that considers what it will take as a society to realize our interstellar future--