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[–] 121 points 7 months ago (45 children)

Found a calculator: https://www.calctool.org/relativity/space-travel

Assuming we want to accelerate at a constant 1g for half of the travel and then brake at 1g for the second half of the travel we would need 151 years to get there but only 9.794 years would pass on the ship. Depending on the mass of the ship we would need coupe million/billion tons of fuel (anti-matter).

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  • [–] 61 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Oh only a billion tons of anti-matter. Good thing we've already made a few nanograms, so in a billion years or so we'll have plenty.

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  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Yeah, and antimatter converts to pure energy with e=mc^2 what means that 60 grams contains like Hiroshima worth of energy

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    In theory yes, in practice we have absolutely no idea how to actually do that and use the energy in an efficient or practical way. Even just on paper without limitations of technology or costs, we have no idea. Physics simply isn't as clean or neat like that in real life.

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  • [–] 40 points 7 months ago (9 children)

    How can it take 151 years to go 150 light years when not close to lightspeed most of the time? I get the 9 year thing, but 151 years seems wrong.

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  • [–] 63 points 7 months ago (4 children)

    Smarter people than me on the internet calculate that at constant 1g you only need 2.5 years to get very close to speed of light. So I guess you accelerate fast enough and reach 'almost speed of light' very early in your travel and total time is almost as if you traveled at speed of light the whole time.

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  • [–] 20 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    The main advantage of keeping accelerating when you're at >90% of the speed of light is that it means you arrive faster in subjective time. You could take 160 years to get there and use ten times less fuel (or thereabouts), but the subjective travel time would go up by decades.

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  • [–] 19 points 7 months ago

    I just used the calc, it's closer to 152 years. Which I assume means acceleration at 1g for about a year to reach .999c, and deceleration for the same time.

    I just confirmed with dV= a*t, a year of 1g(9.8m/s/s) gets you just over the speed of light. I think it's more complicated than that, If I remember right relativistic speeds require more and more energy to accelerate so you can't ever "reach" light speed.

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  • [–] 17 points 7 months ago

    Most of the journey is spent traveling very close to light speed. It's not a linear ramping up and ramping down of speed, since it takes more energy to accelerate the closer you get to light speed. Rather you quickly accelerate to near light speed and spend most of the trip working on that last small bit of velocity.

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  • [–] 32 points 7 months ago (11 children)

    50% chance of being in the habitable zone

    Imagine sitting on a spaceship for 151 years just to discover your parents' bet was wrong

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (6 children)

    Just imagine sitting on a spaceship for 151 years to find out they got there first because in 151 years space travel tech has improved so much they can travel there in 35 years.

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  • [–] 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    Unless we figure out FTL travel that wouldn't be possible.

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  • [–] 7 points 7 months ago (5 children)

    What about accelerating 1g for 16 hours of 'day', then 8 hours of 3g 'night'. It would be one hell of a weighted blanket lol.

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  • [–] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

    I say have a spinny ship that does that with the shape of the ring. Some kind of parabolic bullshit I'm sure there's a way to get it to math without having to have a 1g ring and a 3g ring but that works too

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago (1 child)

    The purpose of my idea is to average 2g without expecting people to function in 2g. Not just for the purpose of a weighted blanket

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  • [–] 5 points 7 months ago* (5 children)

    And you'll only need about 320 million GWh per ~80kg person... plus 4 million GWh per kg of supplies, equipment and ship weight...

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  • [–] 3 points 7 months ago* (2 children)

    So 340 PWh per person. A couple of guys with a static bike and a dynamo and that's it😜

    Note: the Earth receives 170 PWh of energy from the Sun in a year.

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  • [–] 0 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 child)

    Your statement makes things sound a bit confusing.

    To clarify, if you are inside the ship, 152 years will pass.

    Edit: Nevermind. Time travel is stupid.

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