01-03-2019, 07:55 AM
IMHO interstellar colonisation may well be easier than we think, assuming that fusion of some sort can be made to work.
The point is that interstellar space is not empty. Best estimates of the size of the Oort cloud of a typical G star is around 2LY radius. Which means that in many cases, the Oort clouds of neighbouring stars would butt up against each other and maybe even interpenetrate. The requirement for fusion is because it's just about the only way of getting reliable energy two light years from the nearest star. As far as we can tell, cometary bodies ("dirty snowballs") contain enough of everything to build world ships (colonies of reasonable size with engines) given time.
So colonists could island-hop across space, with reasonable distances to travel at each step. This also means that, eventually, there would be far more people in interstellar space than close to suns.
The point is that interstellar space is not empty. Best estimates of the size of the Oort cloud of a typical G star is around 2LY radius. Which means that in many cases, the Oort clouds of neighbouring stars would butt up against each other and maybe even interpenetrate. The requirement for fusion is because it's just about the only way of getting reliable energy two light years from the nearest star. As far as we can tell, cometary bodies ("dirty snowballs") contain enough of everything to build world ships (colonies of reasonable size with engines) given time.
So colonists could island-hop across space, with reasonable distances to travel at each step. This also means that, eventually, there would be far more people in interstellar space than close to suns.