How long to travel 4.2 light years with today's tech?

[Independent voter]

They found a possible earth like planet 4.2 light years away. Is that out of reach at the moment?




http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/24/health...neighbor-star/

Meet Proxima b
Proxima b is a rocky, terrestrial planet with a surface -- unlike a gas giant, such as Jupiter -- that is 1.3 times the size of Earth and orbits its star every 11.2 days. It is in a close orbit of Proxima Centauri: only 5% of the distance between the Earth and the sun. They are even closer together than Mercury and the sun. But because its star is much cooler and fainter than our sun, Proxima b has a temperature that is suitable for liquid water to exist on the surface without evaporating.

Researchers estimate that if the planet has an atmosphere, which could be assumed but isn't known, it may be between 86 to 104 degrees Fahrenheit on the surface. Without an atmosphere, it could be -22 to -40 degrees Fahrenheit. To put that in perspective, Earth would be -4 degrees if it didn't have an atmosphere, Reiners said.

Given the proximity to its star, Proxima b is also subject to less pleasant factors like ultraviolet and X-ray flares that are 100 times the intensity of what Earth receives from the sun. In the paper, researchers estimated it to be 400 times the intensity, but recent research has caused them to create a new estimate, they said. If there is life on the planet, it would be affected by this radiation, but it is pure speculation as to what kind of effect.

[Deleted]

18000 years with the fastest of our probes.

[May90]

It is absolutely out of reach. Voyager, the furthest object we've made, travels at 17 km/s, and while with modern tech we can get over it, I doubt we can go above, say, 50 km/s. 4.2 LY is roughly 4*10^13 km, so roughly - 10 trillion seconds, or over 300,000 years.

We will either be extinct by then, or have traveled to that planet multiple times, so launching a mission on that planet today doesn't make sense.

[Deleted]

No point in going there, you can't survive on it anyway.

[Independent voter]

What we should do is put a big workshop and lab on the spacecraft and crew it with STEM types and tell them "okay if you want to get there before you die, figure out a way to go faster."

[Zethras]

Pretty much what May90 said, if we launched a ship going there today, we will have created better/faster propulsion technology before it would have gone a fraction of the distance, and have already beaten the original ship by thousands of years.

[I Push Buttons]

It is absolutely out of reach. Voyager, the furthest object we've made, travels at 17 km/s, and while with modern tech we can get over it, I doubt we can go above, say, 50 km/s. 4.2 LY is roughly 4*10^13 km, so roughly - 10 trillion seconds, or over 300,000 years.

We will either be extinct by then, or have traveled to that planet multiple times, so launching a mission on that planet today doesn't make sense.

That's the furthest, the fastest was like Helios 1 or something. Almost 44 miles per second, about 1.4 billion miles a year. Would take about 19000 years to go the 27 trillion miles of 4.5 light years at that speed.

[alzoron]

Depends on how much fuel we can take. There's negligible drag in space so if you keep your foot on the gas you keep going faster and faster.

[May90]

That's the furthest, the fastest was like Helios 1 or something. Almost 44 miles per second, about 1.4 billion miles a year. Would take about 19000 years to go the 27 trillion miles of 4.5 light years at that speed.

Yes, but that object got to this speed due to being significantly accelerated by Sun's gravity when it got too close to it; once it moved away, it slowed down. Voyager is the one to maintain a highest speed without external energy sources, AFAIK.

[Alvito]

What we should do is put a big workshop and lab on the spacecraft and crew it with STEM types and tell them "okay if you want to get there before you die, figure out a way to go faster."

Yes we should shoot our brightest people into space on a useless death sentence.

[Dsc]

Much quicker than you think. This is from "NASA" which means skunkworks already has one working.

http://www.space.com/26713-impossibl...nasa-test.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...knows-why.html

[llandrywyn]

What we should do is put a big workshop and lab on the spacecraft and crew it with STEM types and tell them "okay if you want to get there before you die, figure out a way to go faster."

Speaking as one of those "STEM types":

Fuck that.

It's bad enough we have zero job/financial security, and have to constantly beg people for the measliest scraps of funding to carry out the work that the average person takes for granted; threatening people with death by deprivation if they can't perform a feat of engineering that is, based on current tech levels, so far from science as to be magic, is window-licking stupidity.

I'd be more inclined to slingshot around the nearest gravity well and orbital crowbar the probe onto the headquarters of whatever agency was responsible for the stupid decision to begin with.

/endrant

[Masark]

For known-possible stuff, an Orion drive spacecraft could get there in about 50 years.

For a VASMIR ion drive, assuming constant acceleration, maybe 150 years.

[Tyrianth]

Project Orion can reach speeds of up to 0.1 C so we could theoretically reach it in 40 years. Though that would require approval from Russia and the US, as Project Orion is essentially farting nuclear blasts to propel.

[Firatha]

Project Orion can reach speeds of up to 0.1 C so we could theoretically reach it in 40 years. Though that would require approval from Russia and the US, as Project Orion is essentially farting nuclear blasts to propel.

I think I remember seeing some crappy docudrama about that I remember them farting even more nukes just to stop the thing right?

[Tyrianth]

I think I remember seeing some crappy docudrama about that I remember them farting even more nukes just to stop the thing right?

I'm not to knowledgeable on the topic, but I would assume yes lol Crashing would also be an effect way to stop. ;p

[Thoughtcrime]

Current technology is actually much more advanced than most people give it credit. Right now it would just be prohibitively expensive but in theory, if money were no concern, we could get a probe there in a generation. Slowing down is the tricky part.

[Tyrianth]

Current technology is actually much more advanced than most people give it credit. Right now it would just be prohibitively expensive but in theory, if money were no concern, we could get a probe there in a generation. Slowing down is the tricky part.

That doesn't really say anything though, lots of things could be possible today if money wasn't a concern. The reality of the fact is that money is one of the main limiting factors of the technological world.

[Deleted]

Pretty much what May90 said, if we launched a ship going there today, we will have created better/faster propulsion technology before it would have gone a fraction of the distance, and have already beaten the original ship by thousands of years.

That is the exact plot in Forever War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Forever_War

People go to war and by the time they get back everything is obsolete due to time dilation, the main character cannot keep up with the changes in technology and society.

[Thoughtcrime]

That doesn't really say anything though, lots of things could be possible today if money wasn't a concern. The reality of the fact is that money is one of the main limiting factors of the technological world.

Hence the "prohibitively expensive", and "in theory" parts. It says enough and is impressive to me that we 'could'.