# Interstellar Travel Calculator



## Vertigo (Sep 11, 2011)

Although this is actually intended to be a writing resource, I am posting it here (initially at least) to get a broader audience and hopefully some bright person out there who can validate it for me.

As I couldn't find anything out there that did what I wanted, just various Java scripts and apps that each did a bit of it, I have written a little calculator for working out interstellar relativistic times, speeds, distances, accelerations etc. So, for example, given an intial velocity of 0 and acceleration of 1g for two years, then the traveller's apparent time is 1.43 years the final velocity is 0.8996 ly/y (.8996 the speed of light) and the distance travelled would be 1.25 light years.

It can be downloaded here http://www.focussoftware.co.uk/downloads/StarTraveller.zip

And if anyone would like to validate it and see if it produces the result they would expect I would be immensely grateful.

It is pretty simple to use. The only thing to understand is that all units are in years and lightyears. This makes most things pretty simple but you should appreciate that velocities are not in m/s or km/h they are in lightyears/year or ly/y. Also acceleration is the same, so instead of the familiar 1g being 9.81 m/s^2 (metres per second squared) it is 1.03 ly/y^2.

At the moment the download is just a raw exe file zipped. It doesn't really need to be installed in any way, it can just be saved anywhere convenient and run standalone. If there is any interest I might put together a proper installation setup.

Oh, I should add that it is free and that I haven't done any real error checking yet, so it is quite possible that if you put silly values in it may simply crash (divide by zero or some such). Also my intention is to build on this so it can calculate multiple stage journeys eg an acceleration stage, a cruising stage and a deceleration stage and also provide a graphic display of the results.


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## Vertigo (Sep 30, 2011)

Just a little update; I now have a more complete working program including proper installation at:
http://www.focussoftware.co.uk/downl...rTraveller.zip

I have also put it in a writing resources thread as that is what I originally intended it for.
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/533580-relativity-calculator-for-interstellar-journeys.html There are also a couple of screen shots in that thread.

Not that this generated much interest anyway but there you go...


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## alchemist (Sep 30, 2011)

Well, I gave it a go, but couldn't find anything else to benchmark it against. I only found calculators assuming constant velocity. I haven't time to look at the update yet, Vertigo, but I did find the original useful, if a little difficult to understand at first. I'll give this baby another shot later.

Thanks!!

Edit: those links seem to have disappeared, Vertigo.


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## Vertigo (Sep 30, 2011)

Sorry that download link seems to be messed up!

I'll try again:

http://www.focussoftware.co.uk/downloads/StarTraveller_Setup.exe


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