Working out some Superscience Space Drives

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

A calculation for speed of the square root of distance from star in AU and ten divided by 3 might give you the speed range you want.

That would go from .33 AU/day at 1 AU gradually increasing as you go out. I'm getting 6 days to about 3 AU.

You'd be going at about 3.16 AU per day at 90 AU.

I'd fid the system a little too complex to work with really but it might be the speed ranges you want.

A square root - or even quadratic - relationship might be more sensible given the technobabble of how it works, but a linear equation is much easier to work with, particularly if the lateral boost option means the fastest way to travel is going directly toward or directly away from the sun. This basically means you would calculate the speed of the halfway point of the trip, and use that as the average velocity to determine actual travel time.

Honestly, if I go with the "orbital highways" lateral boost option, it might not be horrible to just give the areas between each orbit a constant velocity, albeit a different one for each void (getting faster as you get further from the star). This would replace the calculation with a table lookup.