Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
<shrug>Do the math yourself. Don't just yell at people who do about what happened when they did the math. I did nothing more than see how long it would take to cross 144 AU at a constant 5% of c and add that to the 36 days of acceleration.
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...Seriously, actually doing the math is unnecessary to show why your conclusion cannot be correct.
But fine. 0.5 g accelerating over 72 AU (to the mid-point) takes a little more than 24 days and gets up to a bit over 10 million m/s (3.4% of c). So that's our fairly terrifying half-delta-V. And actually, this paragraph is entirely unnecessary to my point, though I'll use it at the end to deliver actual trip times.
Doubling the acceleration means spending half that time covering half the distance, and then covering the second half of the distance drifting at maximum speed. The maximum speed is twice the average speed of the continuously accelerating ship, so that takes a quarter of the aforementioned time. All told, 3/4ths the time, roughly 18 days, to the mid point, and of course the same from the mid-point to the destination. For a little more precision, it comes to 36.4 days, vs 48.5 at reduced thrust.
Trip time formula if you want to do it out:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
As to parking, if I had 1 G capability I'd normally be landing and not parking.
This is starting to be a sidetrack.
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1 G isn't enough to take off or land unless you're doing it aerodynamically.