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[-] Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 39 points 5 months ago

How can it take 151 years to go 150 light years when not close to lightspeed most of the time? I get the 9 year thing, but 151 years seems wrong.

[-] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 59 points 5 months ago

Smarter people than me on the internet calculate that at constant 1g you only need 2.5 years to get very close to speed of light. So I guess you accelerate fast enough and reach 'almost speed of light' very early in your travel and total time is almost as if you traveled at speed of light the whole time.

[-] Tiresia@slrpnk.net 20 points 5 months ago

The main advantage of keeping accelerating when you're at >90% of the speed of light is that it means you arrive faster in subjective time. You could take 160 years to get there and use ten times less fuel (or thereabouts), but the subjective travel time would go up by decades.

[-] ExLisper@lemmy.curiana.net 11 points 5 months ago

I think having constant gravity on the ship during the entire flight is also a big plus. Designing a ship where you can live in 0g for years and in 1g for years would be like designing two ships in one.

[-] trolololol@lemmy.world 8 points 5 months ago

Not that smarter when they forget you're running out of gas by the Oort cloud. Gotta spread ~~christianism~~ capitalism there and build a petrol station before we go further.

[-] Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 months ago

Earth’s gravity being what it is a blessing cause it means we can do interstellar travel faster.

[-] Grail@multiverse.soulism.net 34 points 5 months ago

The closer you get to lightspeed, the slower you accelerate (from an outside perspective). It's actually close to lightspeed for most of the time.

[-] domdanial@reddthat.com 18 points 5 months ago

I just used the calc, it's closer to 152 years. Which I assume means acceleration at 1g for about a year to reach .999c, and deceleration for the same time.

I just confirmed with dV= a*t, a year of 1g(9.8m/s/s) gets you just over the speed of light. I think it's more complicated than that, If I remember right relativistic speeds require more and more energy to accelerate so you can't ever "reach" light speed.

[-] skulblaka@sh.itjust.works 5 points 5 months ago

Constant acceleration at 9.8m/s^2 in a given direction will bring you close to the speed of light eventually, but yeah, I'm also not super sure how this math checks out

this post was submitted on 01 Feb 2026
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