dragoner
KosmicRPG.com
Take fusion power for example. Thats a pretty hard engineering problem until we solve it. And we need something like fusion to have enough energy for a 1,000 year trip.
Why stand around wringing your hands about how hard fusion power is? That would be a different thread.
It's not just fusion power is hard, because it isn't (and the state where I live is 3/4's coal powered for electrical generation)*. No, what is hard is doing the math and seeing that you would need all the combined power output of the entire Earth for the next ~14 years or so to launch it from out of our solar system. I have no doubt we'll come up with better propulsion systems, such as eventually fusion rockets, anti-matter catalyzed fusion rockets, or even a super VASIMR/MPD type combined with a field that reduces the interaction between mass and inertia on the quantum level, something wild. Nevertheless, that day isn't today.
*Fusion works, we just aren't getting enough energy back out for what goes in. However, fusion reactors to be efficient have to be much larger (football field sized), is what I have read.