One of the things which fascinates me, mainly because I don’t really understand it is I have seen more than once that Einstein claimed that if you were riding a light wave, exactly no time would take place from the time you left until you arrived. This could be billions and billions of light years distant.
Couldn’t this somehow be used?
For the crew on a near light speed traveling ship, yes, but time back home and on the target planet continues normally. In effect, for folks back home, the ship accelerates into the future, and (if one was travelling a billion light years) the target would have aged a billion years (approximately) too, so who knows if it is still inhabitable, etc...