What is holding our race back from developing innovative solutions to make interstellar travel a reality?

Answer 1

I think it's a many-sided answer. First off, technology is holding us back. We simply don't have the means yet to go to other stars and solar systems efficiently. We can't even reach planets and moons within the solar system within a reasonable timeframe. Exploration can only be done if you can get there within a human lifetime. And the technology we do have is not yet advanced enough to allow for a quick jump to interstellar technology.
Second, global politics hold us back. Mankind is divided and is proving on a daily basis how dangerous it would be for us to go 'out there'. It's like sending a caveman into New York: he would freak out and destroy everything he doesn't know or recognize. Humans are still too self-absorbed to fly out into the Great Unknown.
Third, economics hold us back. It is very expensive to launch a space shuttle, and very expensive to perform missions with it. Although the extreme costs of the American design can be criticized, there is no cheap spaceflight yet. Millions go in, and what comes out? Investers don't want to spend billions on uncertainty, so everything needs to be financed by a government, who cannot dedicate funds to such a space program, after all, there's more fields that need funding.
Another question in this respect that you should ask yourself is: how we know space is lucrative? Humans are humans, and if we go out there, we'd also like to make a profit. If we're not absolutely sure space is littered with riches, why the heck would we go there?

There are many more reasons not to develop expensive new technologies and to not go out there. I am quite a dreamer, and would love to go out there for science's sake, to discover whatever the galaxy has to offer. To, as it's been put many times, 'boldly go where no one has gone before'. Until then, however, we're held back by money, means and power.
But the fact of the matter is that we don't even know how to manage one single planet, Earth, a planet which by current universal standards isn't even considered big. I believe we shouldn't *want* humans to go out there, even if we could. All we'd do is end up dead ourselves, or destroy all we see because of our immaturity as a species.

So to go short on your question: we really can develop this technology and zoom away out there, discovering and learning. But we shouldn't yet, and won't for some time, because too many people do not yet have a big enough interest in space flight. Mankind does not yet think outside the box enough.

There is hope though: science is advancing rapidly, doubling in capabilities every year (!!), so it's coming up quickly. Also, with all these global conflicts and tensions going on at the moment, it's only a matter of time before the people speak up and defy the political elite responsible for this. I personally estimate that given the situation in the world and the current pace of science, we will be able to out there within the next one hundred years. Maybe we'll even live to see the day ;-)

Answer 2

The incredible difficulty of doing it. It is like wondering what was holding back the Roman Empire from developing aircraft. They just did not have anywhere near the knowledge needed. We do not (yet) have anything near the knowledge required make interstellar travel a reality. If you think there is not all that much difference between going to the Moon and going to another star, you need to think again.

Answer 3

Wow, the position'd you listen that? someone's' been spinning tall memories (or, extra probably, puzzling interplanetary and interstellar). we've the flair to deliver robot probes everywhere interior the image voltaic equipment, and are in simple terms on the cusp (or close to to it) of having the flexibility to deliver people to the nearest planet. that is hardly interstellar go back and forth. OTOH, we do precisely extremely (and with tremendous rate) be able to deliver a probe to the nearest favourite individual, if we truly had to. it would take about a century to get there although. Any of the above would were in the back of what you heard. yet none of that (or maybe if we had favourite individual Trek-like starships!) would make us invincible. If we were fooling round in interstellar area, there might want to continually be an alien race available someplace with higher and extra acceptable guns and engines than us.

Answer 4

If we are merely interested in sending probes to distant stars, we could do that right now, although it would require a large expenditure of energy to achieve the propulsion needed to have it reach a star system within a few hundred years. We first have to figure out how to generate and store large amounts of energy for such projects to work. However, if we succeed at that, we would first apply that technology to our own world first.

Probably the route needed to be used based on our current understanding of physics is antimatter. The problem is that it currently takes more energy to create antimatter than would be useful (law of entropy). Since antimatter doesn't exist in any significant quantities, its development will require a massive application of talent and focus, and that's not going to happen until we can drop squabbling amongst nations and apply the requisite funding to the research.

Answer 5

Its too damned far.

You can be as innovative as you like, but you cannot make the stars closer. And you cannot (even with as much fuel as you like) accelerate faster than the body can withstand.

This would make the closest stars decades of travel away. And decades to come home.

We just don't live long enough for us to ever bother.

Answer 6

The simple answer, time. Not enough of it has passed yet. We'll get there though. :)

Answer 7

money, time, technology, priorities

Answer 8

fear