We won't need Star Trek Warp Drive to get to the stars, says NASA man (nonsense!)

“We don’t need warp drive or worm holes to reach the stars – we just need to use the known laws of physics and think big,” says Les Johnson of NASA’s Advanced Concepts Office.

“There are ways, in known physics, that will enable us to go from here to other stars, but in order to do that, we have to think differently," he said. "We have to start thinking big. And I mean really big.”

Johnson’s suggestions included a “solar sail” the size of Nevada - and spaceships where generations would live and die on huge craft travelling between star systems.

Johnson, a popular science author, was speaking a conference for the sci-fi game EVE, where humanity traverses the galaxy via wormholes and stargates. Johnson said that the real version would be rather more time-consuming, and require a new kind of thinking.