The Pros And Cons Of Interstellar Space Exploration

Through time, humans have dreamed of travelling across the stars to the exoplanets we’ve spotted far away, but such a trip would be very long. Even to travel at the current space speed record to the nearest known exoplanet would take 43,000 years (4). All that aside; the main issue is sustaining a human population for that long, if it were based generation to generation it would take roughly 600 generations of humans before they arrived based on today’s current life expectancy (3).

This issue isn’t hugely significant as it isn’t currently considered feasible to send humans beyond the solar system. Perhaps in the future this will be more of an issue.

In interstellar space, there isn’t really much of anything, and there’s a lot of interstellar space between things. However, once a vessel travelling at high speed (especially for a long time) even tiny particles of space dust could cause devastating impact on any vessel we could currently design (2). Oxygen and water are quite recyclable but food is a challenge. Another challenge is carrying enough fuel for long periods of acceleration and deceleration during the trip.
In his paper he ignores the perils of travelling through space at high speeds and instead focuses on prospect of a peaceful colony where “not a single bullet has been fired, where not a single bomb has ever fallen from the sky”. Furthermore; Smith suggests sending a colony of 10s of thousands, seeming ignores the issues of sending such a large population or any population at