According to our current understanding of physics, it’s not possible for matter with mass to travel at the speed of light due to the theory of relativity. As an object with mass approaches the speed of light, its energy requirements become infinite. However, light itself, which consists of massless particles (photons), can travel at the speed of light.
This makes it highly unlikely that humans will be able to travel out of our solar system. To put things in perspective, the voyager space-crafts which were launched in 1977, while commendably, having traversed a great distance have not yet reached the Oort cloud which is hypothesised to be the outer edge of the solar system. It will take the voyager space craft 300 years to reach the Oort cloud.
It takes light 4.3 years to travel from the Sun to the Sun’s nearest stellar neighbour, Proxima Centauri. With our current technology it would take us more than 50,000 years to complete that trip.
This being the case it would seem that interstellar travel is in the realm of impossibility and no one is going to be able to do that any time soon. The future may (and that is a VERY big may) be different, but for now it is utterly impossible to travel from one star system like our solar system to another star system.
This brings into focus how unique and special our planet is and the necessity to do all we can to protect it.
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