Star Travel

A recent symposium in Orlando, Florida, looked at various challenges involved in sending a human expedition to another star within one hundred years. Inevitably, one of the biggest challenges discussed was the biological-- having sex and giving birth in microgravity were seen as difficult. Fetal development in microgravity could well be dangerous. And, of course, we already know extended periods of weightlessness is harmful to the human organism.

All of which suggests we won't be ready to go to the stars a century from now. That's fine. Exploring and settling the Solar System and bringing its vast resources into a human economy wealthy enough to easily support human interstellar flight will be the work of centuries.