I like how the shills are back to calling anyone who talks about ET an "ET SHILL"
shows how desperate they are. They are running out of options to keep anons from going down that path of truth.
travel to nearest star, using Q Thruster technology would be much faster than current liquid/solid fuel rockets burn for a few minutes then coast for 80,000 years method.
0.1G thrust 50% followed by deacceleration thrust for remainder of journey would result in a trip of around ~60 years, bigger engines make that shorter for crew but time dilation effects kick in and it will never be faster than 4 years for outside observer no matter how quick it seems to crew.
current EM tech could provide enough thrust for ~40 year journey if we built it out.
>Well, I haven't read about this partcular ion engine, but other ones typically produce accelerations of 0.01-0.1 G. The more fuel you have to carry, the lower that number will be (more weight at the beginning). So for a long distance trip, lets say that it will accelerate at 0.01 G constantly (it would actually increase as you go, since it will be carrying less and less fuel, but we are doing a rough guestimate here).
>So accelleration is on the order of 0.1m/s^2. In 1 year of constant acceleration, ignoring relativisitic effects for the moment, it would reach 6060243560.1 = ~3*10^6 meters per second. That's about 0.1% of the speed of light, so we are okay ignoring relativity for now. In 2 years, it will reach 0.2% of C, etc.
>Assuming it had enough fuel to keep that up halfway to Alpha Centauri, then turn around and do the same slowing down, it would take it about 67 years to go 2.2 lightyears, at which time it would be moving at about 6.7% of the speed of light. Then another 67 years to slow down, arriving in 134 years.
>More accelleration will reduce that, but only so much since once it starts getting closer to C, relativity will make the accelleration less effective. Not significantly at the low speeds in this example, but if it were to get up to 0.1G, then you would be approaching 20% of C by mid trip and starting to be slowed by relativistic effects. At 0.1G, the trip would only take about 42 years. No matter how much you accelerate, it will never take less than 4.4 years as measured on Earth, although it could seem to take less than that to any astronauts on the ship if they get close enough to C.
>Jarad
^
when jared wrote that post Q Thrusters where classified/scifi tech and the theoretical ship they where discussing would require to much FUEL to be possible, MODERN tech changes that completely.
it would still be a massive undertaking but it is possible.
some try to say its not possible by falsely equating obsolete probe technology.
woops typed 60 where i meant 120, the rest still applies
what you are saying is true also.
but does not mean my point is not valid. We can travel there instantly by going inward, or take our meat sack along and take ~120-40 to get there than hitch a ride back in a much nicer ship probably in about 30 minutes.
but for some people the infinite connection is harder red pill than the nuts and bolt tech we have already in existence and in the public domain to use if we pulled our heads out of our butts.
someone who was at one point and time was better at the math of rocket science to answer this question than I am at this point and time.