TRUE
A round trip to a distant star, maybe hundreds or thousands of light-years away, is feasible if the spacecraft can travel (relative to the earth) at close to the speed of light. Let's use the same numbers as worked in Sample Problem 38-1, page 928, as an example. Then the destination is 224 light-years away, and the spacecraft travels at 0.9990c (gamma = 22.4). Note that all parties agree that the spacecraft's speed is 0.999c relative to the earth.

From the viewpoint of the observer on earth, time dilation (stretching out of time) by a factor 22.4 happens on board the spacecraft. If the astronauts take an hour of their time to eat dinner, the earthbound observers measure the dinner as lasting 22.4 hours. Mission Control on earth is a rather tedious job, staffed by several generations of controllers. After 224 / 0.999 years on earth (which still comes out to 224 years to the nearest year), the spacecraft arrives at its destination. Of course, the message confirming safe arrival has to travel back to earth at the speed of light, so there are no celebrations at Earth Mission Control when year 224 of the mission arrives. It is not until several more generations, 448 earth years after departure of the spacecraft, that life becomes interesting at Earth Mission Control. The pictures sent back show the astronauts, looking just 10 years older, arriving at the destination. Time dilation means that 10 years proper time on the spacecraft corresponds to 10 times 22.4 = 224 years in earth's inertial frame. If the astronauts spend a year at the destination and then return, they arrive back on earth 449 earth years after their departure, having aged about 21 years.

The above is the picture as observed from the earth. The astronauts do not notice anything unusual about the passage of time on board their spacecraft. However, they do notice that the distance to their destination contracts by a factor 22.4 when their spacecraft reaches its cruising speed of 0.999c. Instead of having a trip of 224 light-years ahead of them, they only need to cover the length-contracted distance 224/22.4 = 10 light-years. We can see that the earthbound observers and the astronauts measure very different times and distances between events, but the different viewpoints in the different inertial frames do not contradict each other.