9 Places We Could Build Space Colonies

2. Interstellar Starships

If we ever want to leave our own solar system, we'd either better get working on that warp drive, or consider the possibility of generation ships.

Due to the massive distances that would need to be covered between stars, the humans that set off from Earth would not be expected to reach their destination, but live, reproduce and die on the ship, passing it on to subsequent generations. These ships would be like flying cities or even countries. Society would have to be strictly organised, as the vacuum of interstellar space is no place to have a mutiny.

Alternatively, these could be Sleeper Ships, with the crew placed into suspended animation for the duration of the journey. The obvious drawback here is that the crew would then be a few thousand years behind the rest of the human race by the time they woke up.

Ships powered by nuclear fission might well be able to achieve speed of 10% the speed of light, cutting travel time to stars such as Alpha Centauri to a much more manageable 45 years or so.