We have left Mars orbit, the very last possible stop for us. There is no other such safe place farther on the way, no other human reached so far. The only data from the outskirts of the Solar System they had at this point were gathered by the probes and robots. From now on, we will have no stops, only a long, continuous flight until reaching our goal, planet called the New Gaia.
Only now I have started to realize how serious this expedition is and how far we are traveling. Flight to Mars already felt like it took ages, and it was nothing in comparison to flight outside of our Solar System. We are supposed to be the first ones to do that, the first ones to reach another system. Of course, if we manage to do that. Upcoming months will prove if our mission was properly prepared, and if we are ready to survive without choking in the limited space, without killing each other.
Unfortunately, the road in front of us is long. Mars is only the fourth planet in the Solar System, and we are supposed to get as far as to planetoid belt, past Pluton's orbit, since graviton accelerator is located there - a device responsible for creating a controlled black hole, a tear in spacetime, allowing a travel between the systems.
The distance we need to pass before reaching so-called "Gate" is not the only concern many had when introduced to expedition plan. Technology it is based on is one of a kind, and there is no other such construction anywhere else yet. I have read a lot about theories it relies on, studied its construction plans, investigated models behind the idea, and confirmed calculations are correct - still, I feel unrest before passing through it. After all, the only objects we sent to the New Gaia's system were much smaller than Future and unmanned, therefore our crew will be the first to include organic life. What we are doing here is not a routine flight after many tests preceding it, but a virgin flight - the first of a kind, setting a path for future space voyages, hence the name of our ship - Future.
Anyone to say they are not afraid of such a test is definitely a fool. Those who claim they don't feel fear are crazy. In my case, I'm only scared of the unknown, a situation where I'm against something new, something I can't fully trust, and - despite all the scientific work behind it - the "Gate" is one of such things. It might have been used many times during unmanned missions, but even its creators approach each launch with utmost caution, because the force accompanying the process of acceleration and jump is much more powerful and dangerous than anything humanity ever created.
In addition to the "Gate", there is also the case of using the graviton engine, which also relies on antimatter, as a main thruster until the "Gate's" rings take over. If this engine was initiated around Mars, our further flight would take similar time as passing the distance from Earth to Mars - sadly, due to safety measures (antimatter involved in the graviton engine generates a large amount of energy, but any malfunction could become disastrous for any nearby planet), it could be only started after the ship reached safe distance from inhabited planets. Due to common knowledge about the energy output of graviton engine, many also questioned its usage. Personally, I know this technology quite well and consider each much safer than the "Gate", owing mainly to much lower complexity of its construction. Still, the sole fact of including a separate procedure for its usage could easily make the staff feel uneasy.
Therefore, despite having access to high output engine, we need to rely on less advanced technology like plasma thruster, or ionic and nuclear thrusters. Before, I would obviously undermine the sense of mounting so many different engines, taking into account the amount of space these take and the amount of weight they put on the ship, but in the end, having the alternative in long distance travel was an important part of contingency planning. Obviously, there are various factors involved in engine's functionality and you never know when something may go wrong.
At this phase of the travel, we are relying on the main nuclear reactor, which acts not only as the main power source for majority of devices on Future's board, but also for supporting the engines by being used in the process of heating up debris caught during the flight and turning them into the fuel for plasma thruster.
I might've went too much into quasi-technical stuff again, and here I just wanted to write about the importance of this project and how much it requires from the whole crew. The thing here is, we all have our concers, things that scare us. We may be participating in this expedition due to various reasons, but in the end, we are all just humans. It doesn't matter how much knowledge we have, how advanced technology we obtain, we are just ordinary people facing something no one else went through before us.