Even though we have found an Earth sized planet around the nearest star Alpha Centauri B, we're not even close to getting there. To see this let's think about the duration of a flight to Alpha Centauri B, which is about 4 × 1 0 1 6 meters away. Imagine a rocket that accelerates at 0 . 1 g for the first two years of its travel before it runs out of fuel and coasts for the rest of the trip at constant velocity. How long does the total trip take in years ? Note that the acceleration of our rocket is far beyond the reach of current technology - we're not close to interstellar travel anytime soon.
Details and assumptions
This section requires Javascript.
You are seeing this because something didn't load right. We suggest you, (a) try
refreshing the page, (b) enabling javascript if it is disabled on your browser and,
finally, (c)
loading the
non-javascript version of this page
. We're sorry about the hassle.
The distance traveled during the first two years is d 1 = 2 1 a t 2 = 0 . 4 9 × ( 2 × 3 . 1 5 × 1 0 7 ) 2 = 1 . 9 4 × 1 0 1 5 m . The speed of the rocket after the first two years is v = 0 . 9 8 ( 2 × 3 . 1 5 × 1 0 7 ) . The remaining distance of d 2 = 4 × 1 0 1 6 − 1 . 9 4 × 1 0 1 5 = 3 . 8 1 × 1 0 1 6 m is therefore traversed in d 2 / v = 6 . 1 6 × 1 0 8 seconds . The total time is this time (converted to years) plus two years or 2 1 . 6 years .
Problem Loading...
Note Loading...
Set Loading...
using s=u t+1/2 a t^2, it can be found that 1.945 10^15 meters are traveled in the first two years. After that, the velocity is constant, and it takes 19.57 years to travel the remaining distance at 61740000 m/s