"First things first. The Moon. We need to get some folks up to the Moon so we can continue what we started over 50 years ago. And then Mars. We can figure those two out right now."
The visionaries are hard at work. Those who gaze upward and have stars in their eyes - literally. Yes, Elon Musk could be considered one of them. But there is a big problem. It is like visionaries of old imagined latticework of super highways going all over the country. To get from one end to the other end of the country - fast! But the mode of transportation used were horse drawn wagons. So that vision quest, went back to just being a dream.
Right now, our space travelers are just trying to get to the Moon. The area of space called Cis-lunar space. Getting beyond the Moon, and maybe going to Mars - that area of space is called the heliosphere. That is the area of space which is still affected by our sun. That is still considered to be our "neighborhood". But even to get to Mars right now, requires the use of a chemical rocket (horse drawn carriage) and months of travel time. Not really a viable solution.
Then, should we get that mastered, where we could visit the other planets in our solar system, the next big (and that would be BIG) leap - would be interstellar space. Interstellar space is the area between our heliosphere and any other star's astrosphere. In other words - true outer space. Where distance is measured in light years. Sometimes thousands, or millions of light years. How could even our best chemical rocket measure up in true outer space travel? Like it was standing still - forever.
Work is now being done on a nuclear rocket. Also the Aerospike engine. A nuclear rocket could reach speeds of 125,000 mph. That could reach Mars in about a month, rather than many months. But that is still not good enough. With the speed of light being 186,000 miles per second, even going 125,000 mph is like standing still. Some scientists think we will still be in the crawling mode, until we can come up with a rocket which can travel at a fraction of the speed of light. Keep in mind, that 186,000 miles per second, equals about 700,000,000 mph. Even a nuclear rocket, could only go a small fraction of a percent of the speed of light.
What does all this mean? Even with the SpaceX giant space rocket, which can carry large loads and land by itself - we are still at the starting point of space travel. The distances between point "A" and point "B" in space are simply staggering. For example, a neighboring galaxy to us (Andromeda), is 2.5M light years from Earth. Like I say, the distances are simply staggering.
First things first. The Moon. We need to get some folks up to the Moon so we can continue what we started over 50 years ago. And then Mars. We can figure those two out right now. As far as outside our solar system, that stays in the science fiction section of the library for many years to come.
I worked on nuclear rockets 50 years ago. They were practical then but disinformation on all things nuclear prevented their continued development. If we can't even bust an obvious hoax like climate change, our progress as Americans, even as a species, seems doubtful.
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