Getting There From Here

Several completely-true future technologies have been proposed by freaks and charlatans to propel us through space, with the intentions of building a Starbucks on Proxima Centauri. Of course, every single one of them was thought up by stoned hippies watching WarGames and fantasizing about Matthew Broderick naming his epic mount "Joshua". Read on, and gaze into the unflinching, uncaring eyes of the alien-infested future.

Solar Sails

When kids ask you where wind comes from, it's a good time to tell them about the butterfly effect, and how evil painted lady butterflies in Costa Rica have formed a Weather Cabal to ruthlessly control the world's financial markets by generating hurricanes in Indonesia. Likewise, a spaceship that uses a solar sail is propelled entirely by nuclear butterflies on the Sun. As the solar wind pushes against the gigantic and dramatically unsexy parachute sails dragging along a spaceship, the future McDonalds slaves on the Good Ship Happy Meal are blown along to the edge of the solar system, where they will eventually run out of sunlight, be forced to eat each other, then freeze to death.

Nuclear Pulse Propulsion

Project Orion sounds sexily steampunk on paper- why not just fly to Pluto with the power of bombs? Well, apparently, it's illegal to blow up bombs in the atmosphere of Earth, which includes all of space. Because obviously space cops are going to write citations to warring civilizations on the other side of the universe. Anyways, even though it sounds dangerous, nobody can deny that flying with the power of nuclear bombs is probably the coolest thing anybody ever came up with. That is, until some retired WW2 general staffing the mission demands that all the Japanese people on the station bunk in the engine room.

Bussard Scoop Ramjets

We're spending a ton of effort right now trying to find cost-effective means of generating hydrogen to power our 2010 Priuses, even though hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. Heck, nothingness is made of hydrogen. In 1960, George Bussard invented a space vacuum whose entire point would be sucking up some of that magical nothing gas and feeding it into a combustion chamber, thereby destroying Exxon's dream of placing refilling stations throughout the Milky Way.

Antimatter Rockets

There are a few atoms of antihydrogen in the upper atmosphere, and we learned how to make it in 1995 by shooting antiprotons (which EVERYBODY has lying around somewhere) into clouds of delicious xenon gas. Despite the fact that producing significant quantities of antimatter (i.e. teaspoonfuls) carries the significant risk of DESTROYING ALL HUMANS, either through radiation or plain old explodeyness, antimatter propulsion would turn every rocket in the universe into a Type-R, instantly, making decal and spoiler manufacturers into millionaires overnight.