Need Help on "Semi-Hard" Classic SF Spaceship Design

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Ships appear to need to accelerate to some fraction of light speed to enter hyperspace.

Eh, any speed is "some" fraction of lightspeed though most will be very very small fractions.

Anyway, it's useful rule of thumb that (ignoring relativity) it takes 350 days to reach lightspeed at 1G. Or if the scale is more convenient it takes 84 hours to reach 1% of c at 1G.

If you keep this requirement and 1% is enough it'll still take something fast like the Ambulance ships 4.2 hours at 20 G. If you need a higher percentage or a shorter time you're going to end up at one of the Cosmic drives if not sub-warp.

As another measurement,at 20G continuous Mars will be less than a 1 day trip from Earth.

Also note that if you do accelerate at 20Gs in a straight line for 4.2 hours you'll be over 22 million km from your starting point. A literal 100D limit will have no effect on where ships can enter hyperspace though it might limit where they can emerge.