(October 10, 2016 at 11:40 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: Unlike Warp Drive, mélange, Alderson Drive, hyperspace, and a slew of other fictional technologies, nuclear impulse technology is real and can do the job.
The first civilization in the Milky Way galaxy with the technology (that includes us) with the will to use it (does not include us), can colonize the entire galaxy in some millions of years. A far shorter period of time than the galaxy has existed.
Even we would have the will to use that technology if all life on Earth was about to be wiped out by a meteorite.
But you don't just need nuclear power, you need some way to create a ship that can protect yourself from cosmic radiation and sustain life. Maybe you could hollow out an asteroid, but what about when all your lightbulbs blow? How do you build new ones? So you'd also have to build in manufacturing capacity which means mining resources from space rocks. Technically feasible even in the 60's, after all, we do it on Earth, but significantly harder in a small enclosed space in the vacuum of space. This would use up even more energy than propelling the ship through space.
