According to NASA, it would take as little as 260 days to reach Mars, give or take ten days, with some NASA scientists predicting as little as 130 days. But it would take three million years to get to the nearest star system. To go faster would require a much higher exhaust speed than chemical rockets can provide, that of light itself. A powerful beam of light from the rear could drive the spaceship forward. Nuclear fusion could provide 1 per cent of the spaceship’s mass energy, which would accelerate it to a tenth of the speed of light. Beyond that, we would need either matter–antimatter
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