# Gleise 581D



## Luc Valentine (Mar 30, 2011)

But with a mass seven times greater than Earth's we'd all be like reverse Superman.

Travelling to Gleise

Well, that, and the engine isn't done yet.

Edit: Make that Gleise 581D. Perhaps a mod can help me change the thread title.


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## The Judge (Mar 30, 2011)

*Re: Gleise 521D*

I'll try!

There. That's done.  I just hope it makes sense to other people!


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## J Riff (Mar 31, 2011)

At 11 miles a second - over 300,000 years to the nearest potentially habitable planet. Science Fact is just a bit different than Science Fiction.
Still... crank it up a thousand times faster and it's only 73 years.
So it looks like the first planetary outposts will be manned by seniors. )


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## Vertigo (Mar 31, 2011)

In all fairness it is a little spurious to compare with Voyager. It has hardly produced any thrust at all since it was first launched. As far as I'm aware almost all of it's speed has been attained by sling-shotting around the various planets. Which no doubt would also be used as a cheap way of gaining free speed by any such colony ship. Now assuming I've got all my sums right; if you added just a tiny fraction of constant acceleration say 1/100 of a gravity, that is .0981 m/s2, then you would get:

After 1 day 8475.84 m/s
After 1 year 3,093,681.6 m/s or 3,093 km/s compared to Voyagers 11 miles/s. That's already 1% of the speed of light. Bearing in mind how long Voyager has been travelling, that 1/100th of a gravity would have got you up to relativistic speeds by now making your subjective travel time considerably less.


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