Starbound: Interstellar Travel and the Limits of the Possible

This astoundingly accessible yet amply footnoted text is designed with an oscillation in meaning at its heart: the title references the author’s belief that humans are, in fact, bound to our particular star while also hinting that he could be wrong—that humanity may one day be destined to reach planets beyond our own. Regis (Golden Rice: The Imperiled Birth of a GMO Superfood; Monsters: The Hindenburg Disaster and the Birth of Pathological Technology), who writes across a range of subjects, addresses a general audience and provides enough context without too much highly specialized or technical jargon. The book takes readers from the origins of human curiosity about interstellar travel through relevant technologies and beyond. In each chapter, Regis draws attention to limitations, always with the tacit acknowledgment that these are his perceptions of limitations, rather than an unequivocal statement of impossibility. He shows how interstellar travel went from a wildly conceptual dream to something that world governments actually attempted to realize, describes iconic starships and the stories behind them, and analyzes some of the philosophical and ethical discourse surrounding space travel.