In many—even most-space—themed films, whenever Earth faces a disaster,the solution is always running away from the planet in spaceships.

Given the daunting distances between the stars, the real-life version will almost certainly be a lot less sensational than the movies depicting alien invasions or crash-landing spaceships.

In Avatar: For the interstellar journey to Alpha Centauri, humans have constructed spaceships nearly a mile long outfitted with hybrid antimatter fusion engines.