Distance Is Insufficient Entanglement: ER = EPR, the Coherence Cost of Traversal, and Why Space Travel Is a Coherence Problem

Van Raamsdonk (2010) showed that spatial connectivity is dual to entanglement. Maldacena and Susskind (2013) conjectured ER = EPR: every entangled pair is a microscopic wormhole. Distance is not fundamental — it is the absence of entanglement. In the coherence framework: distance is insufficient mutual coherence E(A,B) ≈ 0. A traversable portal is not a new structure but existing entanglement amplified to macroscopic scale. Brute-force cost (Morris-Thorne): ~10^44 J, impossible. If topological connection scales linearly with portal circumference rather than quadratically with area, the Landauer minimum is ~10^14 J — achievable with a fusion reactor in days. The deeper result: the cost is coherence, not energy. Maintaining K > K_crit across both ends and the connection is the actual requirement. Space travel is not a propulsion problem. It is a coherence problem. Includes explicit energy calculations, critical scaling assumption clearly marked as conjecture, and full falsification conditions. Part of the Spektre research corpus.