Subj : Re: Question about space travel
To   : Malvinas
From : poindexter FORTRAN
Date : Wed Jan 22 2025 20:01:51

-=> Malvinas wrote to All <=-

 Ma> less as the rocket goes on... So my question is this: say you want to
 Ma> travel to the closest observable star, which I believe is 4 light years
 Ma> away... is it feasable at all to also accomodate enough "fuel" to
 Ma> actually get the space ship to travel all the way there?

 Space isn't like the movies - you don't come to a stop when the rockets
 cut out. You keep going until an opposing force is applied, like retro
 rockets, to slow your velocity.

 So, if you could escape earth's gravity, you'll get to Proxima
 Centauri, *eventually*.

 Some of the challenges include:

  1. The people inside. People can only tolerate certain G forces, so
  you'd need to accellerate gradually, and decellerate just as
  gradually. Essentially, you'd be accellerating or decellerating the
  entire trip.

 2. Relativistic speeds. the closer you get to the speed of light, the
 faster time appears to pass for the observers. Spend 4 years near the
 speed of light traveling to Proxima and hundreds of years may have
 passed on earth. You might arrive to find Proxima colonized by your
 children!

 Science fiction gets around those issues by "Folding Space", creating a
 static warp bubble that changes the shape of space to allow it to
 travel, or jumping from one place to another somehow. Or, traveling
 along a parallel universe made of magic mushrooms.

 As for the amount of fuel needed, I suppose having enough to slow down
 once you get there would determine how fast you could go and how long
 the trip would take - until we find an alternative.


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