Quote:
Originally Posted by ManOnTheMoon
It would take too long to get anywhere. Alpha Centuri is the closest star to earth at just 4 light years or 23.2 trillion miles!. In the fastest spacecraft nasa has that travels at 17,500 mph it would take about 153000 earth years to go just 4 light years to reach our nearest star system! If we could travel at lightspeed it would be much quicker but only for those onboard. If you would be inside the spacecraft traveling at the speed of light, it would take you 4 years to reach Alpha Centuri. If you were on the earth waiting for that spaceship to get there and back to earth, something like 800 years would pass for you. This is because time slows down when traveling at very high speeds compared to a stationary object !!
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It's doable at 10% the speed of light 40 years, and the Orion project was estimated to reach that.
Exactly, time dilation makes space travel a one way trip, but why would a species not consider the trip? One person still gets to visit a new world, perhaps colonise to keep a species alive? Even if it takes 800 years, that might still be the quickest way to know exactly what is on an exoplanet. We would still want to know wouldn't we? 800 years is better than nothing?
I think such ideals do make interstellar travel possible, just not how the Sci Fi writers in the 50's imagined it.
Here is a question that might be interesting, if anyone here on the board was offered to take such a trip, would you do it? I mean get to see a new world, but likely never your own again?
Would you go?