Name: mark e haupt
Status: N/A
Age: N/A
Location: N/A
Country: N/A
Date: 1993 - 1999
Question:
With today's technology, how log will it take mankind to travel tothe
nearest star besides the sun?
Replies:
I think that's an engineering question. Try the engineering section.
J Lu
The nearest star is a little over 3 light years away
light travels about 300,000 km/sec
with today's technology we might be able to build a manned intersteller
ship capable of 1000 km/sec (the Shuttle orbital speed is a little less
than 20 km/sec)
the rest is simple arithmetic (how many seconds are in a year?)
(there is a tricky part to this question, and that's embodied in the
words "today's technology." It's also a matter of how much money
you're willing to spend to design and build such a ship. Perhaps if
we spent billions and billions [apologies to Carl Sagan] of dollars,
we could build a ship that could average 10,000 km/sec on its way
to the Alpha Centauri star system)
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