User blog comment:PitaKang/Funday Monday 3: What would an interstellar civilization look like?/@comment-1375165-20130501064647

Someone mentioned the Alcubierre metric but I can add that NASA is performing experiments to verify the possibility of getting from one place to another faster than light (it isn't quite accurate to call such travel "faster than light" since something moving by that mechanism isn't travelling faster than the speed of light) by testing the existence of that metric. If they get a positive result, then humanity may have the technology to travel between stars in weeks or months. Some information is in this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%E2%80%93Juday_warp-field_interferometer

I would post the original NASA document which I had but NASA has withdrawn it for review of the material on its sites. My original link was going to be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White%E2%80%93Juday_warp-field_interferometer.

An older relevant document is http://earthtech.org/publications/davis_STAIF_conference_2.pdf.

Nevertheless, since the Alcubierre metric remains speculative science, I don't think we can properly postulate about future interstellar countries. We are almost totally in the dark.