[Spaceships] Voyage Time Calculation with Different Drives

[teviet]

Originally Posted by Anthony

As far as piloting skill, you're pretty much out of luck unless you give your human pilots precognition; a computer is simply better than a human at deep space navigation, and the problems are mostly solvable (for sails, since they're inconsistent, you'll need to solve in a statistical manner, but that won't make much difference). A computer won't necessarily think of the various multi-pass solutions for gravitational assist, but you're looking at much simpler problems.

I suspect nondescript is thinking of a human intuitive ability to predict solar activity: exactly where and when the next flare or CME will be, and how strong, so that he can maneuver into an optimal position and reel in/out sail cable as necessary. Like space-weathersensing. It's mildly cinematic, but probably less so than having a human pilot on other sorts of spacecraft.

TeV