Mind-bending speed is the only way to reach the stars – here are three ways to do it

While we have never been closer to becoming an interplanetary species, any hopes humanity has for inhabiting planets beyond our solar system – let alone solar systems beyond it – remain a distant dream. However, as this stunningly-rendered CGI animation from the Stockholm-based director Erik Wernquist shows, while human-transporting spacecrafts that might traverse the vast distances between planets and even stars are still quite far off, they’re theoretically possible. Commissioned by the Limitless Space Institute in Texas, which seeks to ‘advance human exploration beyond our solar system’, the video features the US aerospace engineer Harold ‘Sonny’ White describing three potential modes of interstellar space travel at three different levels of speed and sophistication.