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Interstellar Travel

Suppose I'd like to take a trip to a Alpha Centauri, about 25.8 trillion miles northeast of Birdseye, Indiana. Assume I have controlled fusion reactors and access to all resources found on the Earth.

  1. What is the fastest I can get there, using current technology and technology likely to appear in the next 10 years? (My fragile body cannot handle unlimited acceleration, and I'd like to stop there for lunch.)

  2. How much fuel will be required? (Don't forget about food, water, and air.)

This is not homework. I'm just curious.

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You using current technology you can't get there. It'll be a bit of a challenge even to get your mummified corpse there in a recognizable form. A bit of a challenge as in needing the whole Gross Planetary Product for a non-trivial period... – dmckee♦ Sep 20 '11 at 19:33
I believe this is an engineering question, not a physics question. Physics doesn't really concern itself with what technologies currently exist, but rather with what technologies are theoretically possible. That being said, I believe there are a couple of questions already on this site that deal with the (theoretical) time limits and fuel requirements of interstellar travel. I'll see if I can dig up some links. – David Zaslavsky♦ Sep 20 '11 at 19:33
@dmckee, I was afraid the time might be more than a single lifespan, but I'd be interested to find out the time anyway. Maybe two of us could go and our descendants could have lunch there. – xpda Sep 20 '11 at 19:40
Thanks, @DavidZaslavsky – xpda Sep 20 '11 at 19:40
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@dmckee: This question should not be closed. The orion style nuclear bomb powered spacecraft of the late 1950s would be capable of making the trip within a human lifetime, and they do not involve any speculative technology. The design was by Ulam and Dyson, two physicists (or rather, two mathematicians specializing in physics), and there is no other field which has a claim on this literature. – Ron Maimon Sep 21 '11 at 2:51
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closed as off topic by David Zaslavsky♦ Sep 20 '11 at 19:31

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