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Let's look at the Joint European Torus for example: input of 38 MW to produce 16 MW of fusion power. With those figures the space ship isn't going anywhere. Could you give a link please? I'd like to see for myself if this is the science fiction author or the scientist talking and how serious...

Well alright then, as soon as i got the time I'll run a more serious calculation with 100x the energy density, which makes that 36000 MWh/kg. It will be interesting to see atleast where this might get us. So what you are basicly suggesting here is folding at nano scale to reduce the size of the...

Because sofar our fusion experiments have only cost more energy to run than they produce. We've been trying for decades already. The results may very well disappoint. Who are those other people who are proposing manned 900-yr space voyages? Ask me NICELY and I might. It's also alot weaker...

I'm a bit skeptical of this wikipedia piece. IFR sound great, almost too good to be true, so why was the only prototype cancelled 15 years ago? 100x efficiency and very little nuclear waste is something we'd want to pursue right? The source [7] for that bit is a some vague article from 1983...

Cite a good source. You're the only one. Ion engines would have died 100 times by then. ICs would've burned up a dozen times. The interior would've become a corroded mess. The kids of the original crew mutinied a long time ago and the original legal owner has ceased to exist. No, he was...

When you cite the kWh figures from a good website, we'll run it with those numbers. Surrounded by a medium that insulates perfectly (near perfect vacuum), and with no access to cool water out of the environment, I'd say running low temperature in space is a great deal harder. Fusion is the...

Even if the process was much improved, the process would still remain in the same order of magnitude, which isn't good enough for this. We cannot transform all the burn-up into useable energy. You might aswell suggest the spaceship runs on magic. You got even less to go on. Electrical...

That's not kinetic energy! Powerplants must use the heat to drive generators and 360,000 kWh / kg remains.

http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf02.html You miss understand. 22000 ton of uranium would hold the energy to transport the empty shuttle, but not anywhere near enough energy to move enough uranium. Here's some very rough numbers of the weight of the fuel tank at t=0: 20 000 * 20000/80...

Just the distance alone should've been enough to convince anyone with a grasp of numbers, but I suppose I'll have to throw some math at you guys. As I mentioned before the distance is approx. 4 * 10 ^ 16 m. The faster you go the more energy it takes, so let's go slow this time: A ship...

Going to another star is nothing like sending a robot to Mars. Compared to interstellar travel, Mars is like stepping into your own backgarden. Interstellar space is HUGE. We have achieved nothing yet, if we wanted to reach the stars. There is nothing to pick up in interstellar space. You'll...

Unless we sent our colonists to an earthlike planet, so we could send seeds and vegetarians. But the odds of an earthlike planet in the few star systems "nearby" are miniscule. Sending a huge craft with every convenience on it, is also impossible. Humanity is not going anywhere ever...

And weight is the one thing you don't want on a space ship. Lead works against radiation. It is a huge problem. If our ship is supposed to be able to reach proxima centauri in 50 earth years, that means particles hitting the ship at about 30 000 km/s. A milligram in space will strike with a...

Read the whole thread. There are ONLY problems with interstellar travel. These are just some of them. Not just the moment of birth itself; though that too is an unsolvable floating mess on a cramped can full of delicate equipment. Child development in zero gravity is the main issue. Boneless...

It all depends on your social status. A poor and backwards hellhole can be paradise aslong as you're on of the ruling elite. Which place in the world has the best climate?

Cosmic radiation. How every dust speck on the way will hit the ship like a shot from a railgun, even if our ship goes so "slow" it takes many decades to get to the destination. Zero gravity child birth in a can. Can we even preserve food for 50 years?

Ofcourse if it takes decades to get there, you are looking at decades without solar energy as the sun will be like any star in deep space. Everything we sent into space now, from satellites to robots on mars, has solar panels. That would nolonger work here for the biggest part of the voyage...

Because physics. The closest star to our sun is Proxima Centauri at 40 000 000 000 000 km; most stars are much further away. It takes light 4.3 years to cover that distance. Now a fighter pilot can typically handle about 9 Gs, but not for a prolonged time and this trip will take very long...

Some of these errors are just plain laziness. A writer should do proper research.

First of all: we are not going anywhere on a astronomical scale. Second: there is no point in just having space habitats. Good luck mining those.