size of the sun!

"The Voyager space probes offer a good illustration of just how daunting the distances are. Sent skyward in the final days of disco, Voyagers I and II hurtled past the outer planets in the early 1990's at a whopping 59,000 km per hour. At that speed, the probes will reach the nearest star in about 60,000 years ?- hardly the stuff of compelling cinema.

To speed the trip up would require a huge increase in fuel weight, which itself would create problems. The amount of fuel required to shorten the trip to the nearest star would be enormous. Even a nuclear fusion engine, one of the most powerful conceivable, would require (and this image is pilfered shamelessly from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratories website) close to a billion super tankers full of fuel to make the journey in a reasonable time. That's assuming you don't want to do anything fancy like come back. Or do it in less than nine centuries. Or see something other than the nearest star."


http://www.scq.ubc.ca/?p=208

Without knowing what ENGINE you are going to use, and what you consider a reasonable TIME, you cannot know how much fuel would be required!

You don't need very much fuel at all just to GET there, it's just a question of how fast you want to get there, and what you consider a "reasonable amount of time."

Obviously by burning more fuel, you could get more propulsion, and reduce the time it takes to get there.

There are conceptual designs for engines such as the Bussard Ramjet that wouldn't require any fuel at all, but would use matter from the interstellar medium as fuel.

Heck, we can't even rule out the possibility of faster than light travel yet...so let's not jump to conclusions about how much fuel it "would" take.

Hint - the nearest star is only 100 million miles away, you wouldn't need that much fuel.

Hint 2 - the second nearest star Alpha Promixa / Rigel Kentarus / Alpha Centurai - whatever you wish to call it - 4.5 lightyears away.

You'd want to use a solar sail (after you'd reach escape velocity for not just the Earth's gravity well - but for our Sun / Solar Systems gravity well) and/or a ionic drive system - not fossil fuel or normal rocket propellant.

With a ionic drive you use far less fuel, acceleration would be alot slower, but alot more sustainable so it'd be a alot faster and more economical in the long run!