The more you critically think about what interstellar travel implies, the more the prospects for it seem to be based upon fairy tales and magic. I tried to raise some of these issues in my previous blogs: The Dismal Future of Interstellar Travel, and Interstellar Travel?...Nah!. In addition to the literally hundreds of comments that these articles inspired across the Internet, there was one notable and thoughtful critique about my premise written by Paul Gilster at Centauri Dreams: 'The Cost of Interstellar Travel'. It was not my intent to be the Grinch that Stole the Cosmos, but as an astronomer and avid science fiction reader, I am frustrated by the naivete of many of the ideas I have come across, which seem inspired less by science than by Harry Potter. Here is my "killer" list of issues:

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