How could it take 81,000 years to get to Proxima Centauri?

[ILKA]

Hello folks, Ive been doing some research, and after looking, it says that the star system is 4.23 light years away from us, which is a far distance, but

lets say, the speed of a vessel was 28,968 m/s, which is easily achievable by NASA standards

A light year is how far light travels in a second (300,000 m/s)

after calculations, a year, this is 9.4608e+12


300,000 divided 28,968 = 10.3562551781

It would take just over 10 times the time to reach the distance light travels in a second

so if the speed of light gets there in 4.23 years

If we multiply 4.23 by 10.3562551781 = 43.806959403363



Would it not take just over 43 years to get there?

(P.S. I am a Noob at astrology, so im sure im partially if not entirely wrong with my calculations, and im sure you could correct me on so :3 )

[Cathulhu]

Ursprungligen skrivet av ProPlayer:

I don't think many random Steam users are veteran astrologists.

I sure hope so, as that stuff is made up male cow excrement. What you mean are astronomers.

[Quaz]

Ursprungligen skrivet av robomagon:

Ursprungligen skrivet av Just A Pie:

We can get to Mars with our current technology, and can send sattelites outside of our solar system. The problem isn't so much about technology, more about recources. We would have to create a large colony ship capable of transporting a small town of people with a lot of fuel, renewable air, food and water. Those are the biggest issues right now.

It took Vogager I 36 years and the gravitational forces of Saturn and Jupiter to leave the Solar system. It's going 17,260 meters/second BTW.

That's a sattelite that doesn't need to transport people, etc. It's much simpler, and if someting ♥♥♥♥♥ up it's not a big deal, just build a new one. If something were to ♥♥♥♥ with a colony ship, a bunch of people die.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Would like too see the faces of those colonists when after 200 years they arrive with their big colony ship and there are no habitable planets at all there, maybe not even remotely colonizable like Mars.

[𝕙.𝕓𝕒𝕣𝕜𝕒𝕤]

OP you forget in your assumptions that it takes time to accelarate to your assumed speed
and to decelerate before reaching the target star.
The Solar system and the Centauri System are moving in space so you can't fly in a direct
line from A to B and the effective travel distance in ballistic flight would be substantially longer.
Next problem would be how to protect the vessel during flight at 0.1 c from hazards like
micro meteorites.
The biggest problem with current rocket technology is the fact that the payload of a spacecraft
is only a tiny fraction of the overall mass (about 1:100).
So it may be feasible to send a tiny probe atm but not a huge ship accommodating the needs
of multiple spacefarers even if the crew would spend the flight in cryogenic sleep (which also is not invented to my knowledge).

[C4Warr10r]

Barkas makes an excellent point. There are no brakes in space, so whatever your travel time is, unless you're using an inertialess drive, double it. You have to slow down, too. That puts us back up at roughly 120,000 years at 20km/s. Closer to 128,000, but what's a few thousand years?

[robomagon]

Ursprungligen skrivet av h.barkas:

OP you forget in your assumptions that it takes time to accelarate to your assumed speed
and to decelerate before reaching the target star.
The Solar system and the Centauri System are moving in space so you can't fly in a direct
line from A to B and the effective travel distance in ballistic flight would be substantially longer.
Next problem would be how to protect the vessel during flight at 0.1 c from hazards like
micro meteorites.
The biggest problem with current rocket technology is the fact that the payload of a spacecraft
is only a tiny fraction of the overall mass (about 1:100).
So it may be feasible to send a tiny probe atm but not a huge ship accommodating the needs
of multiple spacefarers even if the crew would spend the flight in cryogenic sleep (which also is not invented to my knowledge).

You mean cryonic, not cryogenic.

[Erwin The Necromancer]

Ursprungligen skrivet av robomagon:

Ursprungligen skrivet av h.barkas:

OP you forget in your assumptions that it takes time to accelarate to your assumed speed
and to decelerate before reaching the target star.
The Solar system and the Centauri System are moving in space so you can't fly in a direct
line from A to B and the effective travel distance in ballistic flight would be substantially longer.
Next problem would be how to protect the vessel during flight at 0.1 c from hazards like
micro meteorites.
The biggest problem with current rocket technology is the fact that the payload of a spacecraft
is only a tiny fraction of the overall mass (about 1:100).
So it may be feasible to send a tiny probe atm but not a huge ship accommodating the needs
of multiple spacefarers even if the crew would spend the flight in cryogenic sleep (which also is not invented to my knowledge).

You mean cryonic, not cryogenic.

Fix em all!

[KENJI]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Mastor Saimon-kun #TK #MRD:

Still we need to upgrade our current technology to even get anywhere

Teleportation through black holes?
Enter here to Proxima Centauri. Kreygasm

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

It's clear that with 20 km/s you are not going anywhere. It would need at least nuclear pulse engines.
And to build big colony ship you need space elevator.
And to scout the systems suitable for colonization you need lot bigger space telescope then Hubble.
None of this aint gone happen anytime soon.

[robomagon]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Rumpelcrutchskin:

It's clear that with 20 km/s you are not going anywhere. It would need at least nuclear pulse engines.
And to build big colony ship you need space elevator.
And to scout the systems suitable for colonization you need lot bigger space telescope then Hubble.
None of this aint gone happen anytime soon.

The James Webb Space Telescope says hi.

[Rumpelcrutchskin]

Ursprungligen skrivet av robomagon:

The James Webb Space Telescope says hi.

I doubt this would be enough to scout planets with only 6.5 m mirror, you would need entire array of those linked together.
Five of those linked together would prob be enough but they have pretty insane cost and NASA almost lost the funding for even this one.

[Commander Makara]

Ursprungligen skrivet av ILKA:

Hello folks, Ive been doing some research, and after looking, it says that the star system is 4.23 light years away from us, which is a far distance, but

lets say, the speed of a vessel was 28,968 m/s, which is easily achievable by NASA standards

A light year is how far light travels in a second (300,000 m/s)

after calculations, a year, this is 9.4608e+12


300,000 divided 28,968 = 10.3562551781

It would take just over 10 times the time to reach the distance light travels in a second

so if the speed of light gets there in 4.23 years

If we multiply 4.23 by 10.3562551781 = 43.806959403363



Would it not take just over 43 years to get there?

(P.S. I am a Noob at astrology, so im sure im partially if not entirely wrong with my calculations, and im sure you could correct me on so :3 )

You seem to have made a number of significant errors:

1) A LIGHT YEAR is the distance light travels in ONE YEAR : This is approximately 9460800000000000 metres.
2) The speed of light is approximately 299 798 000 m/s^2 (around a thousand times grweater than you suggest)

APPROXIMATELY:
It would take 10 000 years for a vessel travelling at 30 000 m/s^2 to travel 4 light years*


________________

*Obviously not accoutning for the acceleration and deceleration times.

[C4Warr10r]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Rumpelcrutchskin:

It's clear that with 20 km/s you are not going anywhere. It would need at least nuclear pulse engines.

Even then, it's unlikely that humans in their present form are going anywhere. Hell, you could have a fusion rocket and it would still take too long, and require too big of a ship for us to go to the stars.

Fortunately, we don't need to. For the purposes of colonization, we have our machines and the ability to create life from scratch. They aren't advanced enough to send them off on their own yet, but they're very close, far closer than FTL or anything like that, if it IS possible.

Unlike such sci-fi sciences, we know it is possible to grow a human being from genetic material alone. We also know it is possible to make a computer capable of the complex tasks that would be needed to create life and make sure it doesn't die. We can even create learning machines right now, after a fashion. It's just the scale of this technology that is lacking, not the concept.

The technology is sound enough that we need not make the trip, and honestly, who wants to? Space is fasincating, when there's stuff in it, but the overwhleming majority of it is boring and empty. What we would find could be alien, we may not like it.

Usually, when people say they want to travel to oother planets, what they really mean is that they want to travel to exotic and interesting earths. When they say they want to meet aliens, they mean they want to meet exotic and interesting humans.

Well hell's bell's we have the tech for that, too! Maybe Oculus or Vive aren't perfect, but people want that technology. Virtual worlds, where we can create whatever we wish. But better than that, if we can send humans to the stars, even just as code, they'll become the exotic humans everyone wanted with their own exotic earths, and we can make hundreds, maybe thousands of those ships for the price of one colony ship.

Then they can send us their information, and we can share with them. Might take a few hundred years in transmission, but way better than going for Wolf 359 or bust.

With this technology, and fusion, people from Earth could just become a space-faring race if they had to. Doesn't matter if resources run out here, the galaxy is full of them, and you can fuse them into whatever you need. All the while, people (or what's left of their physical bodies, live in a virtual world. They don't care where they are in the depths of space.

Probably the best thing about this, though, is that you don't really have to worry about humans fighting each other for control of the galaxy. Because we would if we could, I have absolutely no doubt.

Maybe it's possible to design some sort of human that doesn't fight its own kind, I just don't see it happening, ever. To create such a thing would be to go against the nature of life itself. But with the vastness of the stars, who in the hell can attack anyone? What would they do? Build an invasion fleet that can travel 12 light-years to the self-contained human race that pissed them off somehow with such infrequent communication and construct a human race from scratch or rely on machines? Short war, that. Besides, absence makes the heart grow fonder. If you want people to love each other, seperate them for a while. Suddenly they've never seen anything so great as another human.

I've been thinking about this stuff since the first time someone told me that I would never go to the stars and I actually believed them. It was terribly disappointing at first. But as I found out more and more about the alternatives, I honestly think this might not just be what we're limited to, but that it's for the best.

[Commander Makara]

It might be worth mentioning the importance of stress on the engineering composition of any spacecraft.
Even at relatively low speeds and without friction, there are temperature gradients and such that will stress any construction.

[C4Warr10r]

Ursprungligen skrivet av Commander Makara:

It might be worth mentioning the importance of stress on the engineering composition of any spacecraft.
Even at relatively low speeds and without friction, there are temperature gradients and such that will stress any construction.

Graphene is all over it for now. 200 times stronger than steel, virtually impossible to melt because it's made of carbon, and just one in a string of engineered carbon supermaterials.

With these, you could actually house a sustained fusion reaction, and fission is nothing. No lack of carbon in the universe for raw materials, and if we get sustainable fusion as I'm sure we will.......

Sometimes, the universe just works too perfectly for it to be an accident.