Will it ever be possible to travel to the stars

asks Woolley:

A. For the first time, Nasa experts have come up with a plan that could take mankind to the stars.

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Spill the beans...
At the recent American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Boston, Geoffrey Landis, an expert in space propulsion from the Nasa Glenn research centre admitted that it could be possible to create a spaceship that would be able to accelerate to one-tenth the speed of light and carry colonies of humans to the stars.

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Q. How long would it take
A. No fast fixes here, I'm afraid - it would take generations, It has been suggested that the crew might be all-female with a bank of sperm to supply the future. (However, scientists have discovered that sperm acts differently when not at earth gravity, and that's something that would have to be sorted out first.)

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Q. Why would it take so long
A. It's just such a great distance. Take the Voyager probes which were launched 20 years ago. They are travelling out of the solar system at about ten miles a second. If they had been launched at the end of the last ice age, they wouldn't be 20% of the way to the nearest star yet.

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Q. So how fast would the new spaceships travel
A. They would be much faster - travelling at 18,000 miles a second. It would be possible for them to reach the nearest star in 40 years. The spaceships would be like a sailing ship, using ultralight sails only a few atoms thick but miles and miles long.

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Q. What would they do for wind
A. They would be pushed by a powerful laser in orbit. Getting started isn't the only problem - the scientists have got to work out how to stop it, too. It's just as hard to stop something travelling at a tenth the speed of light as it is to start it. And getting back is yet another problem.

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Q. So it's not going to happen in the next couple of years
A. Not a chance.

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Q. Where can I find out more about space travel

A. To find out more, visit the Nasa website

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By Sheena Miller