4 ms·
Accelerating consistently at 1G (and then -1G for the second half), should take 6 years of proper time (from the perspective of the traveller) to get there.
by throwawayk7h 2y ago
Accelerating consistently at 1G (and then -1G for the second half), should take 6 years of proper time (from the perspective of the traveller) to get there.
- bee_rider 2y agoYea, actually the problem is not at all that we’d need too much acceleration for the human body. Accelerating at 1g for a couple years gets you to preposterous speeds (and we don’t even need any artificial gravity nonsense!). The problem is that accelerating at 1g for years would require a ridiculous amount of energy.
- dctoedt 2y agoIn his 1958 juvenile novel Have Spacesuit, Will Travel (I read it years later as a tween), Robert A. Heinlein described this as a "skew-flip maneuver" that would get someone from Earth to Pluto in five days at 8G (!). And apparently E.E. "Doc" Smith described it even earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_Travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Have_Space_Suit%E2%80%94Will_T... https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/261753/what-was-the-earliest-reference-to-turnover-maneuvers-for-constant-boost-spacesh https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/261753/what-was-th...
- Dylan16807 2y agoAnd because faster acceleration only gives you square-root returns, a leisurely 1G trip going the same distance is still over in 14 days.
- crazygringo 2y agoHuh. I've heard lots of science fiction ideas for artificial gravity, usually starting with rotating space stations. I never heard of anything so obviously straightforward as that, though. Surely impractical, but good to know!