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Radio signals from Deep space received!

Hey if we build a ship that could maintain 50,000 miles per hour we could be there in about 20 thousand years so I'm signing up. And please don't start pointing out all the reasons it would not work. Anyone else?

You need a crash course in basic math. At 186300 miles per SECOND it would take 2.5 BILLION YEARS.
 
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Hey if we build a ship that could maintain 50,000 miles per hour we could be there in about 20 thousand years so I'm signing up. And please don't start pointing out all the reasons it would not work. Anyone else?
The ship would have to be occupied by breeder pairs or the ship would show up with human dust piles. It would take many generations to get there.
 
But you should be
AWWW come on Uncle Jedi! Can't we have a little fun before Granny and Mr. Drysdale wake up?(The Intergalactic Hillbillies) By the way what the hell is the Aluminum Falcon?
upload_2019-1-13_18-5-39.jpeg
 
The more-credible plan proposed by more than one SF author is to accelerate the ship at a steady 1G. "G", as in normal earth gravity. Takes care of the 'free-fall' problem, no need to invent "artificial gravity". But the energy needed is staggering. You boost halfway there and turn around. There is a brief moment of zero gravity while you turn around 180 degrees and then decelerate at one G for the rest of the trip. You would still need to transport enough people to have children, since the original crew will be too old when the ship finally arrives. Even this way you would spend a hundred years or more to reach even a nearby star.

At the turnaround point you'll be moving a LOT faster then 50.000 miles per hour.

73
 
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1g constant acceleration will get you to relativistic speed (near C) in a little less than a year. Then there's the Delta V necessary to get there and the mass conversion/fuel efficiency issue. Short story is even if using Encapsulated Deuterium/Tritium fuel the energy conversion doesn't allow for any payload. It would all be fuel :-( *

Even if a fuel was available and all you had to deal with is a year accelerating/decelerating and add the rest of the distance/years there is another troubling issue. Space is not empty. Even interstellar gas would be an impediment akin to wind resistance. So drag increases as to the square of velocity ...

Anything larger than molecular would pass right through without a second thought depositing a fair amount of its mass as energy squared along the way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Apologies to our favorite Fiction writers of the past century but the Bussard ramjet does not work with current technology or physics. It would however be able to vacuum ahead of the vehicle to remove any molecular debris and possibly "most of the interstellar dust up to several microns and process it through the vehicle as reaction mass and additional thrust. Think a kind of inverse deflector shield.

All in all it's an interesting topic but a bit of a dead issue for a technologically infantile society such as ours. Still it doesn't hurt to dream.

* fuel requirement is on the order of a metric shit ton. Nearly what you would find in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.
 
1g constant acceleration will get you to relativistic speed (near C) in a little less than a year. Then there's the Delta V necessary to get there and the mass conversion/fuel efficiency issue. Short story is even if using Encapsulated Deuterium/Tritium fuel the energy conversion doesn't allow for any payload. It would all be fuel :-( *

Even if a fuel was available and all you had to deal with is a year accelerating/decelerating and add the rest of the distance/years there is another troubling issue. Space is not empty. Even interstellar gas would be an impediment akin to wind resistance. So drag increases as to the square of velocity ...

Anything larger than molecular would pass right through without a second thought depositing a fair amount of its mass as energy squared along the way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet

Apologies to our favorite Fiction writers of the past century but the Bussard ramjet does not work with current technology or physics. It would however be able to vacuum ahead of the vehicle to remove any molecular debris and possibly "most of the interstellar dust up to several microns and process it through the vehicle as reaction mass and additional thrust. Think a kind of inverse deflector shield.

All in all it's an interesting topic but a bit of a dead issue for a technologically infantile society such as ours. Still it doesn't hurt to dream.

* fuel requirement is on the order of a metric shit ton. Nearly what you would find in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant.
It's getting old having to point out all that is being left out.

1) Mass molecular dispulsion theory along with interstellar subtonic expansion of the de-atomization of subatomic hamster wheel power, LOLOLOl
 
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Are We Their YET?? 1g x 10 g = Dang . Eat moor Beans We need the gas . Whear is Pork Chop When you need Him?? Lol
 

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