Malvinas wrote to All <=-
less as the rocket goes on... So my question is this: say you want to travel to the closest observable star, which I believe is 4 light years away... is it feasable at all to also accomodate enough "fuel" to
actually get the space ship to travel all the way there?
Space isn't like the movies - you don't come to a stop when the rockets
cut out. You keep going until an opposing force is applied, like retro
rockets, to slow your velocity.
So, if you could escape earth's gravity, you'll get to Proxima
Centauri, *eventually*.
Some of the challenges include:
1. The people inside. People can only tolerate certain G forces, so
you'd need to accellerate gradually, and decellerate just as
gradually. Essentially, you'd be accellerating or decellerating the
entire trip.
2. Relativistic speeds. the closer you get to the speed of light, the
faster time appears to pass for the observers. Spend 4 years near the
speed of light traveling to Proxima and hundreds of years may have
passed on earth. You might arrive to find Proxima colonized by your
children!
Science fiction gets around those issues by "Folding Space", creating a
static warp bubble that changes the shape of space to allow it to
travel, or jumping from one place to another somehow. Or, traveling
along a parallel universe made of magic mushrooms.
As for the amount of fuel needed, I suppose having enough to slow down
once you get there would determine how fast you could go and how long
the trip would take - until we find an alternative.
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