Comment and SpaceScientists ideas for travelling to the stars range from the the wholly improbable to the hugely expensive and very difficult, says Ed Regis 29 January 2025 Adri VoltWhile researching Starbound, my new book on the realities of interstellar travel, I was often surprised by the bizarre, over-the-top spacecraft designs that scientists have proposed in well-regarded academic journals. The best-known of these is Project Orion (1957-1965), whose central idea was to propel an interstellar spacecraft by detonating a series of thermonuclear bombs behind it, giving the craft a succession of powerful kicks through space.Long after the project ended, Freeman Dyson, who worked on the project, said: We really were a bit insane, thinking that all these things would work. Amen.Plenty of other wild starship designs have