In Senior physics, we just finished a short unit on Einstein’s special theory of relativity. One of the implications of special relativity is that nothing can travel faster than light, which travels at 300,000 km/s (186,000 miles per second) in a vacuum. In fact, it would take an infinite amount of energy to accelerate an object with mass—such as a spaceship or even an electron—to the actual speed of light. I had my students write essays on this, and they did an excellent job.

This doesn’t stop science fiction authors from having their characters zipping around the galaxy, using hyperdrive or warp speed. The internet has a Museum of Speculative Fiction Inspired Spaceships, where you can see all of your favorite spaceships from Star Wars, Star Trek, and other series drawn to scale for comparison. The images I have here are not all from the same page, so they are not all drawn to the same scale:

Grace and Peace