How possible is Star Wars? Part 1: Is faster-than-light travel possible?

Back in 1977, a movie inspired people to dream of a galaxy far, far away. It also caused a lot of kids to demand their parents buy a seemingly never-ending stream of action figures.

Forty-one years later, many of those same kids are still collecting. Expanding beyond action figures into clothing, props and other mass-produced artifacts.

What’s this movie that continues to not only inspire across decades, but generations as well?

That movie is of course “Star Wars,” as everyone called it at the time, or otherwise known as “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.”

For all five of you left that have never seen the movie, it takes place in a time of a galactic civilization, where humans are dominant, alien species live alongside them and robots have minds of their own. The galactic civilization is controlled by the Empire, which is headed by, of course, the Emperor.

In honor of the 41st anniversary of the release of “Star Wars,” I will be sharing a series of columns looking at the things that are more “mundane” as far as Star Wars go, the things that make a high-tech galactic civilization possible, which exist in some form today: space travel, space colonization and artificial intelligence.