[sandworm101]

I think you should check your math again.

155,200mph = 69,380 m/s

At 1g acceleration (10m/s/s) that is 6,938 seconds. 6,938 seconds is like 2 hours.

A ship that can sustain 1g acceleration continuously for periods measured in hours, that would indeed be an interplanetary drive. Sustain that for days/weeks/months and it will take us to other stars.

[snake_plissken]

Heh many thanks, you are correct. Somewhere in there I divided something incorrectly.

[ashtonkem]

I double checked, because I originally thought you were wrong, but it looks like you're essentially right.

32mi/s * (5280ft/mi) = 168,960 ft/s

168,960 ft/s ÷ 32.17405 ft/s^2 = 5,251.4371053691s

5,251s ÷ 60 s/min ÷ 60 min/h = 1.45hr

[onlyrealcuzzo]

How long do you need to accelerate at that pace to reach C? 299,792km/s / .01km/s => 29 million seconds? ~335 days?

I'm assuming a lot of things would go wrong as you get closer to C...

[sandworm101]

Or go right. Time dilation would start working in your favor. You might get there, and back, within your lifetime. Of course everyone on earth would be long dead.

[rimunroe]

Micrometeors and radiation would be the major problem. Also, it's not just time dilation that would help. At relativistic speeds, space contracts quite noticeably in the direction of travel, so the actual distance you need to cover diminishes as well.

[rbanffy]

That's because you won't be locally faster than light. You may cover 4 light years in one, but only because those light years will be much smaller from your point of view. You'll never "feel" faster than light.

[rimunroe]

I think you may have misinterpreted what I said. I didn't claim that you'd feel like you were covering the distance faster than light. I was saying that as you go faster (relative to your destination), space contracts ahead of you so the distance becomes shorter than it would if you were moving slower.

[jandrese]

However, remember that accelerating at 1G for more than a scant few minutes is beyond the capabilities of modern rocketry.