This is something I've been pondering about. The article is well written but doesn't mention that even mere specs of dust can have catastrophic consequences for

This is something I've been pondering about. The article is well written but doesn't mention that even mere specs of dust can have catastrophic consequences for spacecraft (literally a spec of a few milligrams). A logical solution is performing high c% travel in vacuous regions of space where the probability of interacting with something is minimal. Albeit this restricts your travel greatly. Another solution, which requires a rather strained reading of relativity, would naturally imply that travelling close to c for massive objects would produce a form of gravitational shield around you (event horizon like) preventing any forward collisions from reaching you.