Interstellar Travel

Here I’ve tried to collect a series of resources on the scientific basis for interstellar travel. This is a subject that has fascinated me since I was a teenager reading science fiction books.

While the science behind making the interstellar leap is currently very daunting and interstellar travel itself is currently limited to science fiction alone, nonetheless there is active reseatch going on in this subject area. If we begin laying the groundwork now for this undertaking, our descendents may reap the benefits of seeing the distant sunset on an alien world.

You’ll notice that I have deliberately ignored some very speculative resources, mostly those dealing with faster-than-light travel as well as those dealing with extraterrestrial intelligence. I’m trying to stick closely to what as is currently thought of as possible given our current level of scientific understanding.

And while there are some good resources concerning extraterrestrial intelligence, SETI, first contact, etc., separating the good from the truly out there can be difficult and, regardless, it is beyond the scope of this page.

Articles

Books

Communities

Conferences

Documentaries

Organizations

Papers

Web Sites

  • Atomic Rockets - an absolutely amazing resource on spacecraft design.
  • Centauri Dreams - a blog dedicated to the subject.
  • Real Spaceships - a blog with lots of illustrations of scientifically-accurate spaceships. Not all are starships, but some are.

Wikipedia Entries

These are very useful for getting up to speed on Interstellar Travel.