Subject:
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Re: Transit Time to Mars
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.geek
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Date:
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Thu, 16 Dec 1999 07:38:47 GMT
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Viewed:
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154 times
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Larry Pieniazek wrote:
>
> In lugnet.off-topic.geek, Steve Bliss writes:
> > Basic physics word problem, which I thought of because of NASA's
> > publicity about renewed Mars exploration, and putting people on Mars:
> >
> > If a spaceship could accelerate at a constant rate of 1G, how long
> > would it take
> > to get safely to Mars?
> >
> > Assume the distance to Mars is 36 million miles.
> >
> > Show your work. ;)
> >
> > I worked out an answer to this, but it was too low to believe.
>
> if you thought THAT was amazing, try it to Pluto... or to Alpha
> Centauri!
>
> RAH (1) did a science fact article on this, way before most of us were
> born. It drives home how fast you can go if you can just keep
> accelerating. But unless you can come up with a reactionless drive,
> you'll never carry enough reaction mass to accelerate that much for
> that long.
Of course, when you're going *that* far, you also have to count
relativistic effects. Is '1g of acceleration' from the frame of the
guy on the rocket, of the frame of the guy on Earth? (Important
difference...) And then you have to figure out how long it takes from
the frame of reference of the guy on the rocket, and how long it takes
from the frame of reference of the guy on Earth...
Also, as LN (1) has pointed out, to hold 1g of accel, one could use a
Bussard ramjet (basically, a big magnetic field which scoops hydrogen
out of space and compresses it by a *lot*, generating fusion; how to do
this was worked out sometime in the 1920s, unless I'm hallucinating).
It's outside of our current tech, but hardly impossible. (Also, you've
got to get it up to a pretty high % of c before it starts working,
but...)
> 1 - Robert A Heinlein, arguably the best (if somewhat inconsistent) SF
> author ever. You either love him or hate him. Ignore his last 5 or so
> books when evaluating him, though.
>
> +Lar
1 - Larry Niven, arguably the best SF author ever. Discounting Clarke,
Card, Gibson, Herbert, Asimov, Adams, and Stephensen, who are also all
arguably the best SF author ever (well, I despise Gibson, but hey).
Wrote hard Sci-Fi, though--he based pretty much everything in science
fact.
--
Ben Olmstead/BEM
<bem@mad.scientist.com>
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Message has 2 Replies:
 | | Science Fiction (was Re: Transit Time to Mars)
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| (...) I smell a fun geek topic. Best books by these authors? I would submit: "Rendezvous with Rama" as Clarke's best work. "Ender's Game" as Card's. Either "Dune" (the obvious choice) or "God Emperor of Dune" for Herbert. "The Mote In God's Eye" by (...) (25 years ago, 16-Dec-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | Re: Transit Time to Mars
|
| (...) about (...) take (...) if you thought THAT was amazing, try it to Pluto... or to Alpha Centauri! RAH (1) did a science fact article on this, way before most of us were born. It drives home how fast you can go if you can just keep accelerating. (...) (25 years ago, 15-Dec-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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