I would highly recommend though, that you set it to travel at the speed of light, and get a feel for how long, even at C, it takes to go anywhere in the solar system. Here's a handy table that lists the current distances to various objects in the solar system from Earth as of the current time.
| Mercury | 0h 10m 20s |
| Venus | 0h 2m 50s |
| Mars | 0h 18m 46s |
| Jupiter | 0h 49m 7s |
| Saturn | 1h 9m 49s |
| Uranus | 2h 55m 21s |
| Neptune | 4h 17m27s |
| Pluto | 4h 25m 26s |
| Voyager I | 15h 8m 11s |
| Voyager II | 12h 19m 22s |
| Sol | 0h 8m 15s |
That's just within the Solar System. When you start thinking about stars, even in our immediate vicinity, you start talking real distances. There are only 15 stars within 10 light years of us, and of those several are a part of binary/trinary systems (which I kinda doubt would have earth-like planets), so you're really only looking at 8 distinct star groups within 10 light years of us. The closest that is not a part of a multiple star system is 5 light years out. So, even if you have a ship that travels as fast as light, you're looking at a 5 year voyage, one way.
Things only get manageble when you throw out C as a cosmic speed limit. Travelling at the incredible speed of 1 AU (the distance between the Earth and Sun - approximately 93 million miles) per second, the trip to Proxima Centauri (4.26 light years distant) is still 187 days away. Of course, if we get to throw Einstein out and exceed the speed of light, we could propose possible speeds of light years/sec, which would at least make many places within the galaxy obtainable. Certainly enough to keep us busy for a while.
I bring all this up mainly because people really don't realize how vast space really is. If somehow we eventually are able to explore it though, we're going to see some amazing things.
One last note I'll leave you with... Using celestia, you can cruise out to Pluto and look back at the Sun. It's kinda cool. The Sun is barely a disk at a distance of 31.6 AU, but it does stand out from the rest of the background stars. Now, go to Betelgeuse, then zoom in to about the same distance. The star is huge. If you were standing on a planet as far from Betelgeuse as Pluto is from our Sun, you would be looking up at a star that is the size of an old silver dollar held about a foot away from your face. If you were on a planet as far away from the star as Jupiter, the star would stretch almost from horizon to horizon before you.
Pretty cool stuff.
I recommend Celestia to children from 5 to 95. It's awesome.
Good recommendation. I have that program and used to play with it quite a bit. One of the little “games” I used to play was to “journey” way out into the Local Group of Galaxies on a more or less random trajectory, then turn around and re-enter the Milky Way and try to find my way back to Earth (with all labels turned off). Tough, but you get better at it with practice.
I ought to download the latest version and see what changes have been made. Thanks for reminding me!
I used to use Starry Night Pro.
It was pretty cool.
The program stopped working about a year ago and i dont have the install disc anymore.
I’ll try out Celestia.
Ping for later.