{"id":235955,"date":"2026-04-26T14:03:41","date_gmt":"2026-04-26T19:03:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/light-powered-spaceships-could-get-to-our-nearest-star-in-20-years-fiction-scientists-say-it-could-become-fact"},"modified":"2026-04-26T14:03:41","modified_gmt":"2026-04-26T19:03:41","slug":"light-powered-spaceships-could-get-to-our-nearest-star-in-20-years-fiction-scientists-say-it-could-become-fact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/light-powered-spaceships-could-get-to-our-nearest-star-in-20-years-fiction-scientists-say-it-could-become-fact","title":{"rendered":"Light-powered spaceships could get to our nearest star in 20 years. Fiction? Scientists say it could become fact"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/light-powered-spaceships-could-get-to-our-nearest-star-in-20-years-fiction-scientists-say-it-could-become-fact.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>That would mean generations upon generations of human lifetimes, all lived out on board a rocket ship travelling across space, in the hope of a comfortable utopia waiting for us when we arrive.<\/p>\n<p>Now, a team of researchers say they\u2019ve demonstrated a form of light-driven propulsion that could one day get us to Alpha Centauri in 20 years.<\/p>\n<p>A team of researchers at the J. Mike Walker \u201966 Department of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&amp;M University say they\u2019ve demonstrated lasers can be used to lift and steer objects without physical contact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That would mean generations upon generations of human lifetimes, all lived out on board a rocket ship travelling across space, in the hope of a comfortable utopia waiting for us when we arrive. Now, a team of researchers say they\u2019ve demonstrated a form of light-driven propulsion that could one day get us to Alpha Centauri [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38,1514],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-235955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-engineering","category-space-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}