Expedition into the Stellar Ocean
Interstellar Spaceflight

Perspectives, opportunities and risks

My current Book Project

Exposé [Ed./Idee/Concept/Author: Harald Zaun]

… this will be the title of my new book, to be published by Springer-Spektrum-Publisher Group in Autumn 2021.

As an anthology in which numerous renowned scientists, science authors and science journalists participate, it will set out for new stellar shores. In my book, we look deep into the future of our species’ space travel. Based on this premise, we dare to take a philosophical-physical-astronomical-technical-artistically oriented look at the astronautics of the third millennium with this anthology. It will be a look that comes from different perspectives, since scientists, engineers, science writers, philosophers, artists and writers of the most diverse professional origins and ways of thinking throw it. The focus is on interdisciplinary questions: Where does our journey go beyond the solar system? Will we one day really follow the traces of the Voyager and Pioneer probes, which have long since penetrated the interstellar space? How realistic are nanoprobe robots as exploration grooves in the Alpha-Centauri system that could be launched as part of the Breakthrough Starshot initiative in the next decade? Could extrasolar planets in other Milky Way solar systems offer us a new home? In the distant future, in order to survive in the long term, will we be forced to create colonies even outside our solar system and develop new extra-terrestrial resources there? Are generational spaceships an option? Should we send biological life forms into eternity, as it was transfigured into a scenario in many SF novels? Isn’t it much more obvious to send only robot probes or androids or cyborgs into the depths of space, because Homo spa-ciens is known to be the weakest link in space travel and completely unsuitable for everything? Will it not be us, but self-replicating Von Neumann probes who will explore the galaxy? Would it be conceivable and feasible in 1000 years’ time to have a space flight as fast as light, as in the Star Trek cosmos? How does a biological life form cope with the effect of time dilatation? What cultural effects do the relativistic effects of an almost light-fast or over-light-fast space flight have? Even more extreme: Could wormholes point the way to other galaxies for our most distant descendants? Have we possibly been visited by interstellar travellers ourselves, as depicted in the distinguished film “Arrival”? Quo vadis, Homo spaciens?

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