[hublio]

Wow, that is a really sophomoric analysis. Considering interstellar travel to be infeasible on the basis of duration or distance is a narrow perspective. If we lived much longer, or if our metabolism was much slower, it wouldn't be as much of an issue.

The amount of energy required is the only sensible perspective from which to analyze interstellar travel. If you make things really small, again, it's not much of a problem.

The author also neglects the time dilation. Go fast enough and the time dilation takes care of the duration.

Give my team the resources and I'll put a few billion base pairs of Picard's DNA into orbit around Proxima long before Daenerys is riding a dragon.

[metabolian]

Agreed, he's confusing FTL travel, which has profound theoretical objections, with general interstellar space travel, which has no such issues, space rocks like Oumoumoua do it all the time. To a million-year-old, immortal alien ET, a journey of a hundred or a thousand years is trivial. An absolute paucity of imagination here.

[DrierCycle]

there's immortality?

[Valgrim]

Not only that, but there are quite a few scientifically sound concepts that escape the tyranny of the rocket equation. Pre-seeded trajectories, particle beam propulsion, sails etc. Breaking the wall of light might not be possible but beating the current rockets by orders of magnitudes is enough for interstellar travel. And that is only an engineering problem.

My personal favorite these days is innumerable 'smart' pellets, bacteria sized, steering themselves using albedo-changing surfaces toward the ship's magnetic sail to transfer their momentum, allowing for constant acceleration.

[DrierCycle]

It's not an "engineering" problem, it's almost always a physics problem. If life is involved it's also an ecological and bio problem.