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To: LdSentinal

Nope...you can do it in under 50 years. If you accelerate at 0.1g the whole trip (half would be acceleration, half deceleration) the trip takes about 10 years, at 5 years for signal reception and you’ve got a minimum of 15 years. Lower accelerations give you longer trip times. I have a chart in a book somewhere.


14 posted on 03/07/2008 6:56:58 PM PST by AntiKev (Von nichts kommt nichts.)
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To: AntiKev
If you accelerate at 0.1g the whole trip (half would be acceleration, half deceleration) the trip takes about 10 years...

I just don't to get there and find out it's not there....

15 posted on 03/07/2008 7:00:41 PM PST by stboz
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To: AntiKev
Nope...you can do it in under 50 years. If you accelerate at 0.1g the whole trip (half would be acceleration, half deceleration) the trip takes about 10 years, at 5 years for signal reception and you’ve got a minimum of 15 years. Lower accelerations give you longer trip times. I have a chart in a book somewhere.

Unfortunately, the amount of fuel required to do things that way gets outrageous pretty quickly. Call the mass of the ship without fuel S, and figure that the mass of fuel required to accelerate an empty ship continuously at 0.1g for a week be the same as the mass of the ship. Then the mass of fuel required to provide one week's acceleration to the ship plus one week's fuel would be 2S. The mass of fuel required one one week's acceleration for ship plus two weeks' fuel would be 4S. The mass of fuel required for one week's accelleration for ship plus ten weeks' fuel would be about 1,000S. For twenty weeks, 1,000,000S. For 52 weeks, more than 4,000,000,000,000,000S. No even remotely-plausible improvements in efficiency are going to achieve numbers anywhere near useful.

21 posted on 03/08/2008 12:38:54 PM PST by supercat
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