Is this how aliens do it?

[Indigo]

Lasers Could Blast Tiny Spacecraft to the Stars
Traveling to other star systems is a big dream, but achieving it may require going ultrasmall.

Blasting tiny, waferlike sailing spacecraft with powerful lasers could slash interstellar flight times from thousands of years to mere decades, one researcher says.

http://www.livescience.com/51623-lasers-power-tiny-interstellar-spacecraft.html
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Perhaps lasers are a mode of transportation? Beam me up Scotty?

 

[Cashcleaner]

The movie Avatar used the same principle for the Venture Star spacecraft shown there. The Photon Sail is located on the right, and it's used for the outbound leg of the trip to Pandora and back.

 

[curandero81]

The movie Avatar used the same principle for the Venture Star spacecraft shown there. The Photon Sail is located on the right, and it's used for the outbound leg of the trip to Pandora and back.

Alright...alright....your posts have been interesting to me, but this ? I am lost...time for homework..back later...another example of why I enjoy this forum...learn new things
Thank you...back later

 

[Indigo]

The movie Avatar used the same principle for the Venture Star spacecraft shown there. The Photon Sail is located on the right, and it's used for the outbound leg of the trip to Pandora and back.

I did like that movie, but I guess I didn't pay attention to the more technical parts...I was all caught up in the social justice symbolism & the idea we could project ourselves into something else...I have been meaning to watch it again, and this time I will pay closer attention.

 

[Cashcleaner]

^ Oh for sure, Cameron was pushing the moral and ethical narrative of resource exploitation (and it's impact on indigenous peoples) over anything else in the film. Most of the background info on space travel and our other colonization attempts didn't make the final cut in the film, but were written about in the novelization and a few other books on the film.

I like how the Photon Sail was used to get from Earth to Pandora, and how a Matter/Anti-Matter Drive was used to get back. The trip still took around 5 years, though that's incredibly fast when you realise that it takes light just under 4.4 years to get to reach the Star from our Solar System.

 

[The Doctor]

Starwisps! Only powered by solar sails.

For a fictitous account of a starwisp, I highly recommend reading the second story arc of Charles Stross' novel Accelerando.