The Pioneer O was flown by the US on Aug 17th, 1958 to the Moon. After scores of missions by US and Soviet Union NASAs manned mission Apollo 11 landed successfully on the Moon on July 16, 1969. It took 11 yrs to land on the Moon which is just 340000 kms away, a two day manoeuvre. Oct 10,1960 The Soviet Union flew 1M No 1 to Mars. Viking 1 unmanned spaceship landed on Mars in 1976 16 years hence. 40 years into the Viking lander mission we are still far away to send a manned spaceship to Mars the next most in-hostile planet . Venus at the closest opposition is 38 million kms but is a very hostile planet. We do not know how to stay in microgravity conditions for almost 18 months just to travel back and forth to Mars and what fuel we will use. We have not still built a colony on the Moon since our first landing in 1969. The Mars is at a distance of about 75 million kms. Jupiter is at the closest distance of 668 million kms. How long would it take to reach Io or Europa or Encedalus the moons of Jupiter. It is not possible to travel these distances with prevailing technologies. New Horizons was launched by NASA in 2004 and will make a flyby to an object MU69 in the Kuiper Belt on new years day 2019 fifteen years into the mission. It has travelled 5.7 billion kms approximately 380 million kms per year. How do we travel to Proxima B our nearest exoplanet of the Alpha Centauri system located 4.24 light years away. If we travel at the speed of light ie 300000km/sec it will take 4.24 years to reach Proxima B exoplanet. The cosmos is billions of years in space. If we have to go anywhere in our neighbourhood we need to travel at the speed of light years if we have to cover a voyage in a life time.
If we have to peep into space we cannot do it at this rate although we can say we have achieved a lot. We have had fantastic dreamers in the past and all the fantasy stories have been converted into realities. We need a mega-fantasiser who can peel off the Oort clouds and swim rapidly into the dark cosmos as if it were our close neighbourhood.
Someone has to think out of the box and beyond rockets and conventional spaceships. May be we need to ride some waves or travel through hyper-holes and or in vacuum as some astronomers suggest.
