Saddlestone said:
Was Brian May showing off his Astronomy knowledge in a subtle way?
I guess he kind of did, but not to the extent of taking into consideration the acceleration that would be required to achieve that sort of time dilation in such a short distance?
From the crew's perspective, most of that year would be spent accelerating up to light speed at a rate 4 times Earth gravity (almost 3 months), decelerating at 4 times Earth gravity (almost 3 months), turning around and accelerating back up to light speed at 4 times Earth gravity (almost 3 months), and decelerating at 4 g to arrive back at Earth. The remaining time would be spent traveling virtually at light speed (around 99 years Earth time, but almost no time crew time - I mean, if you're already going .99995 times the speed of light, what's another 10,000 m/sec or so?) and discovering and exploring the planet (at least a week adjusted upwards since you'd still have some time dilation while accelerating - just a lot, lot less).
Or, the crew somehow endured even higher rates of acceleration to shorten up the time spent accelerating and extending the time spent travelling, discovering, and exploring.
A human can maintain consciousness up to about 5 g, but could increase that up to 9 g with training and a pressure suit. Or, if they make sure they maintain a postition horizontal to the direction of acceleration, they could sustain up to 17 g for short periods (provided their orientation was "eyeballs in" vs "eyeballs out"). But "short periods" is usually measured in minutes instead of weeks.
Of course, since we're talking about traveling close enough to the speed of light to get a 100:1 ratio in time dilation, then I guess designing a system to handle the acceleration involved is just as possible, so maybe I'm being bit nitpicky.
(They should make a video of that song, though, and the video should show the effects of the guy inadvertantly orienting himself "eyeballs out" for the entire year.)