“You’re going to be exposed to galactic cosmic radiation for decades, and that isn’t good for you.” “The galactic cosmic radiation of being exposed in a starship, even a well-shielded starship, is such that it probably is really a problem,” Kelly says. Instead space travel would be slow, dangerous, and grueling. But such technology will probably never exist. Sci-fi often makes interstellar travel look easy, with characters jetting around the galaxy using FTL drives. “Is that really what Joe Six-Pack is going to want to spend his money on, to make sure that some future, future, future, future generation is going to have a happy life on some world going around Tau Ceti?” Kelly says. Kelly thinks that’s an all-too-plausible scenario. In Kelly’s new novel Mother Go, opposition to a colony ship steadily mounts as the launch date approaches because a vocal ‘Earth First’ faction doesn’t want to see so much technology and talent depart the planet forever.