How big is space?

The entire culture, physics and politics of Rome's Revolution depends upon the characters being able to travel between the stars. But really, is that practical?

I had postulated that the Grey Drive could accelerate a ship up to 5% of the speed of light. Even at that speed, it was estimated that it would take 250 years, a quarter of a millennium, to get to Tau Ceti. What about real life?

The fastest object to ever leave our Solar System, to date, is Voyager 1, currently clocked as traveling at 17 km/sec. Compare that to the speed of light which is 299,792 km/sec. The Voyager 1 space probe is traveling at .005% of the speed of light. At that rate, it will reach the edge of the Oort Cloud, generally considered to be the edge of the Solar System, in 40,000 years. Even if it were pointed directly at Proxima Centauri, the closest known star, it would still take yet another 40,000 to reach that star system.

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There ain't nobody who is going to hang around for 80,000 years to see if Voyager reached the next star system over. If you thought that Voyager 2 would go farther and faster than Voyager 1, forget it. Voyager 2 is only traveling at 16 km/sec. There was a time when Voyager 2 was farther away since it was launched August 20, 1977. Voyager 1 was launched a few weeks later on September 5, 1977. It has a higher net speed so once Voyager 1 pulled ahead, it pulled ahead for good.

Here's the bottom line: if we are going to travel to the stars, we are going to have find a better, faster way. The PPT star drive which goes around space, rather than through it, seems like the only reasonable way to proceed. Well, until we get the Null Fold X-drive which has no upper speed limit!