Nothing can travel faster than 300,000 kilometers per second (186,000 miles per second). The closest star to Earth, Proxima Centauri, is about 4.25 light-years away, or 25 trillion miles (40 trillion kilometers). The fastest spacecraft ever launched, the Parker Solar Probe, has a maximum speed of 450,000 miles per hour. That's fast enough to get from Los Angeles to New York City in just 20 seconds! But it would take the probe 6,633 years to reach the nearest neighboring solar system.
The faster you move relative to someone at rest, the greater the contraction of your length will be, while the longer it will seem to expand to the outside world. Solar sails are thin plastic sheets attached to a spacecraft and designed so that sunlight can push them, like the wind in a normal sail. Surprisingly, the record for the fastest manned mission still belongs to Apollo 10, which took place in May 1969. If you could somehow compress the space between you and your destination so that the interval is now just one meter, you could theoretically reach your destination in no time at all. Scientists are investigating many other ways to go fast, including high-speed travel and faster-than-light trips popularized by Star Trek.
Because the speed of light is constant for all observers, someone who moves through space (in relation to stars, galaxies, etc.) In theory, this approach doesn't contradict the laws of relativity since you don't move faster than light in the space around you. All rockets, even those used by SpaceX and Blue Origins, burn rocket fuel that's not much different from gasoline in a car. However, for someone aboard a rapidly moving object - be it a particle, a train or a spaceship - the cosmic distances you try to cover will be those that contract. General relativity states that space and time are merged and that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light.
In fact, it's the fastest thing that exists and a law of the universe says that nothing can move faster than light. The answer depends on whether you're referring to manned or unmanned rockets and spaceships. Some spacecraft have used solar sails to prove that they work and scientists believe that a solar sail could propel spaceships at 10 percent of the speed of light.
