Dreams of star travel

The year I moved to Edmonton, I was heavily into Battlestar: Galactica. It has a reputation for being the kind of show that induces uncontrollable bingeing. But that’s not my style. In Guelph, I paced myself by getting together with a friend once a week, to watch as if it were still an on-air television show. I like this because it gives me lots of time to reflect on what happened in the show and try to figure out what’s going to happen next.

Once in Edmonton, I was broke, unemployed and mostly stayed at home for the first little while. This gave me a little too much time to reflect on the show. I started to think a lot more about space travel in general, which led me to the website of Paul Gilster, Centauri Dreams. He posts surprisingly frequent updates (almost daily) on the science and progress of space travel.

When Terra Informa started planning a special edition on “Night,” I jumped at the opportunity to interview Paul about the Fermi Paradox—a suprisingly simple observation that suggest we may never actually manage to travel the stars. Learn all about it, and more on the practicality of space travel in this story.

This story originally aired as part of Terra Informa At Night in November, 2012.