Foreverz! (like me and my Gwynnies! 
) 
Things go at the speed of light because they have no mass. Massless particles have one speed - c - that's all they get. They also have no time. So, foreverz. As has been mentioned, these limitations indicate that to accelerate to c takes essentially infinite energy, which builds up to infinite mass, and then you have no time. So "accelerating to c" directly is likely to remain on the fiction side of science fiction.
And yes, if you were to somehow directly able to accelerate to near c, if you hit something, you'd vaporize your cruiser. Some fictional scenarios have ships that project a forward force field to push these pesky particles out of the way; I know Reynolds likes to coat his cruisers in a thick plating of ice. Where there's imagination the possible solutions are endless.
But, never do nothing direct when there are indirect means of achieving the same result. Things like the Alcubierre drive posit warping space into essentially a gradient that is higher behind your cruiser and lower in front so that it is theoretically possible to skirt relativistic limitations. Unfortunately this requires negative energy (and likely exotic matter) things theorized but never actually observed. Another potential benefit of this hypothetical negative energy may be to reduce the effective mass of the craft. In some warp-drive scenarios, the amount of warp available varies directly with the amount of mass reduction.
Another indirect potential methodology is nanoscale automation, the sending out of Von Neumann machines to build the ring structures necessary for the construction of wormholes. This potential eliminates relativistic constraint by ignoring the space between objects.
But yeah, foreverz, like me and my Gwynnies!
) Things go at the speed of light because they have no mass. Massless particles have one speed - c - that's all they get. They also have no time. So, foreverz. As has been mentioned, these limitations indicate that to accelerate to c takes essentially infinite energy, which builds up to infinite mass, and then you have no time. So "accelerating to c" directly is likely to remain on the fiction side of science fiction.
And yes, if you were to somehow directly able to accelerate to near c, if you hit something, you'd vaporize your cruiser. Some fictional scenarios have ships that project a forward force field to push these pesky particles out of the way; I know Reynolds likes to coat his cruisers in a thick plating of ice. Where there's imagination the possible solutions are endless.
But, never do nothing direct when there are indirect means of achieving the same result. Things like the Alcubierre drive posit warping space into essentially a gradient that is higher behind your cruiser and lower in front so that it is theoretically possible to skirt relativistic limitations. Unfortunately this requires negative energy (and likely exotic matter) things theorized but never actually observed. Another potential benefit of this hypothetical negative energy may be to reduce the effective mass of the craft. In some warp-drive scenarios, the amount of warp available varies directly with the amount of mass reduction.
Another indirect potential methodology is nanoscale automation, the sending out of Von Neumann machines to build the ring structures necessary for the construction of wormholes. This potential eliminates relativistic constraint by ignoring the space between objects.
But yeah, foreverz, like me and my Gwynnies!
