Is interstellar space travel possible?

Suppose that stars are one light day away. If this is true, stars are very small and their planets are very small.

Alpha Centauri has same apparent size whether four light years or one light day away. It has the apparent size which has been measured. This means, the nearer it is, the smaller, and the further away, the more of the smallness is due to distance and the bigger the star actually is.

Now, Centauri seems to have no exo-planets, at least not those where the distance is 4 light years in conventional astronomy.

But on my view, all stars are either one light day or a thicker shell between one and two light days above or that is around us. So, if the stars are one light day away, they are fairly small and the ones with exoplanets have fairly small exoplanets.

How Big is Kepler 452? A Geocentric Minority Report
https://nov9blogg9.blogspot.com/2015/07/how-big-is-kepler-452-geocentric.html

I got a first calculation on that one wrong, but in comments, I got to star, Kepler 452, being about 1 part per million (not trillion as in first calculation) of the Sun in volume, if the distance is one light day away.

Now, if this is true, the exoplanet will be very small indeed:

If astronomers supposing it 1400 ly away say it is 5 times the volume of earth, that means it is in each dimension approximately 1.7 times the volume [dimension] of Earth. However, if you divide this by 1400 to reduce to one light year and then further by 365 to reduce to one light day, you get a very small fraction, which multiplied with 12600 km as diameter of Earth give you a diameter of Kepler 452b as 41 meters and 91 centimeters. I checked on a converter to get 137.5 ft, that is 137 ft and six inches.

In other words, if Kepler 452b is just one light day away, it is way too small to colonise.

Before we get to implications of standard view, let's stay on the one light day note.

This is at least about the distance to stars in the plane where Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were sent, each of them having a few light hours of distance left before reaching the one light day limit.

How long did it take them to get this far?

Voyager 1 is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977.

Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets. Part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with Uranus and Neptune.[4] It is the only spacecraft to have visited either of these two ice giant planets.

So, both probes have been in space since roughly August 28 1977.

28-8=20
28+8=36-31=5

11 I 2019
28 VIII 1977

Convert:

42 XII 2018
28 VIII 1977
14 IV 41

So, they are in space for 41 years, IV months and 14 days by now. I go from wiki to Nasa to find their distance: 20 light hours and 16:40 light hours, one way. Actually a bit more on each. A full light day is 24 light hours, one way. This distance is measured by the signals sent from earth and back to earth, each signal having a signature, so one can see it's the same coming back after more than 40 hours and after more than 33 h 20 min.

So, in 41 years, not even 20 light hours.

Could either probe have brought along people with sufficient food, water and oxygen to last the 40 years and more? No.

Keep this in mind before we get back to standard view on distances.

Closest star is 4 light years. In this view, which I don't share, but it's the view in which Kepler 452b is colonisable, so it is relevant for the discussion. Kepler 452b is however fully 1400 light years away. Let's approximate the 20 light hours of Voyager 1's distance to 1 light day. Let's exaggerate things in the favour of stellar travel even more and pretend it took 40 years.

If that had been true, my hunch on stars being 1 light day away would have been refuted or confirmed around August 28 2017.

1400 * 40 = 56 000.

So, to get from Earth to Kepler 452b (on the view on which it is worth colonising) would take 56 000 years. How do you make a space ship able to transport living men, food, air and water all of that time?

The rather obvious answer is, you don't.

Now how about colonising Mars at least? It's a longer day, which is nice for sleeping rhythm, but it's far too cold. I don't think this even is very feasible ... but colonising interstellar space is a fairy tale. Dito, I presume, for any "extraterrestrial civilisations". In order to build star ship Enterprise and make it work with warp speed, you might want to be God Almighty.

And if you are God Almighty, you can create man on earth without intervention of Aliens. Gloria Patri, et Filio et Spiritui Sancto, sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum, Amen.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Nanterre UL
St. Salve of Amiens
11.I.2019

PS. I was tired. I calculated travel time at Voyager speed and some more for 1400 light days. The standard distance presumption is however 1400 light years.

This means, it wouldn't take 56 000 years, but 365 times more, 20 440 000 years to reach Kepler 452b, if it is as far away, as large and as habitable as astronomers say.

20 million years on a space ship? Don't think so ... bonus fact: if I am right and the real distance to the stars is 24 light hours, one light day, away, well, in 8 to 18 years we will know. Unless Voyager project is fraudulent. At Voyager 1 speed it would take 49 years and at Voyager 2 speed 59 years to reach that limit. Of these 41 are already past./HGL

PPS, to Proxima Centauri b, the distance of 4.2 light years = 1533 light days = at medium Voyager speed = 68 985 years of travel./HGL