How to Fly to Alpha Centauri

Talking about building an interstellar space ship makes you sound like a sci-fi fan who's lost touch with the real world. Unless you're Mae Jemison, a former astronaut and the head of 100 Year Starship, an organization the home page of which boldly commands, "Let's make human interstellar travel capabilities a reality within the next hundred years." The problem: space is big, and our current rocket technology isn't cutting it, says Marc Millis, the head of the Tau Zero Foundation. The heads of yet another interstellar organization, Starship Century, think they are on the right track. The technology is the beam sail, pushed with microwave beams, instead of wind, to extremely high speeds.

You can listen to How to Fly to Alpha Centauri online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

How to Fly to Alpha Centauri is an episode from Science and Creativity from Studio 360.

This episode is 08:40 long.

This episode was published on Sep 13, 2016.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from Science and Creativity from Studio 360 when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.