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Nuclear pulse propulsion can theoretically reach .1c. Forty years to Alpha Centauri. One could argue it’s a matter of engineering and motivation, not known phys
by marktangotango 8y ago
Nuclear pulse propulsion can theoretically reach .1c. Forty years to Alpha Centauri. One could argue it’s a matter of engineering and motivation, not known physics.
- robotrout 8y agoAt 0.1c, that 40 years will just whip by for the travelers themselves. To them, it will only seem like ... 39.8 years (doh!) No help there.
- simonh 8y agoIt's just not sustainable though. Who is going to build a 10 million ton vehicle to deliver a 400 ton payload? It's the Apollo model of space travel. It might be a lot more feasible with longer journeys, but is a transit time of a dozen or more generations really going to be attractive? There are considerable barriers. Just because you can put a number on something doesn't make it practical. To put it another way, what distance between stars would you say would make it impractical to spread between them via colonisation? Where would you put the threshold?