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The Lounge
Science Fiction and Fantasy Media
Sci-Fi Writing and World Building
How Long Would Scifi Space Travel Really Take?
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[QUOTE="stefan r, post: 6285124, member: 615251"] Like snorkack said jump to someplace that has a lot of gravity. Let the gravity change your velocity then jump again. If you want to just make it challenging require the ship to match the cosmic microwave background. That is about 370 km/s relative to the Sun. The Parker Solar Probe will periodically be traveling faster. This might just confuse readers and distract from plot. It might be a fun twist for gaming. I think the nomogram (basically a slide rule) [URL='http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php#id--Brachistochrone_Equations--Delta-V--Nomograms']located here[/URL] is what you are looking for. I would suggest figuring out how long you want it to take and how much fuel you want the characters to need first. Then put a straight edge on 100 km/s and then you can read off the acceleration or ship mass. The chart even has suggestions for various types of engines do not exist but maybe could. Project Rho has lots of information useful for science fiction. 9.8 meters per second per second is about 1 g. To get to 100,000 m/s would take 9,800 seconds. 2 hours, 43 minutes and, 20 seconds. If you round off to 10 m/s[SUP]2[/SUP] it takes 2 hours 46 minutes and 40 seconds or about 3 hours since we are rounding. Units of days stop making much sense if you have an interstellar empire. IMO you should use 10 kiloseconds of acceleration instead of 3 hours. Vernor Vinge uses these units for time in his book [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky']A Deepness in the Sky[/URL] but it should be standard for science fiction. 100 kiloseconds makes a good work/sleep rotation. A work shift could be a quarter centi-kilosecond or a third centi-kilosecond depending on how good your union is. You could fit a round trip into one work shift if you can get acceleration time under 10 ksec and do a quick loading/unloading and one jump. Should get overtime pay if they make you do more than 4 shifts in a half megasecond. So takes one deca-kilosecond to reach 100 km/s at standard acceleration. [/QUOTE]
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How Long Would Scifi Space Travel Really Take?
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