Why Can't We Send a Space Mission to a Star

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The Answer is The bottom line is that we just don't have the technology to support this kind of travel. The distances between stars are almost beyond comprehension. The fastest human device ever launched, the New Horizons probe currently on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper Belt, will take about 90,000 years to travel the distance to the nearest star, 4 light-years. The obvious way to overcome these huge distances is with tremendously fast spaceships, but even the closest stars are many light-years away.
Nothing can exceed the speed of light, and accelerating a spaceship close to the speed of light takes huge amounts of energy. Even if you travel slower than light, your rocket would still require massive amounts of fuel. If you wanted to pilot a spaceship with a mass of 100 tons (about the size of a fancy yacht to the nearest star, and you traveled at half the speed of light so as to arrive in eight years, the trip would require 400 times as much energy as the entire United States consumes in a year. Don't even think about how much fuel the starship Enterprise needs.
These limitations not only make it difficult for humans to leave the Solar System, but they would also make it difficult for aliens to visit Earth.

Why Can't We Send a Space Mission to a Star

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