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A comment on Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a nearby star. Parent comment

Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by sametmax on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @11:09AM (#20213939)
I smiled as well but with a slowly but steadily accelerating ship we can reach half the light speed and get there in 50 years. It put things in the realm of "possible" which is amazing.
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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by gameswithgo on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @11:58AM (#20214518)
now do some napkin math on the reaction mass and energy you need to slowly accelerate that much for that long
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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by jniedrauer on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @12:23PM (#20214778)
And the energy transferred by an impact with a piece of dust at luminal speeds
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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by loteck on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @07:06PM (#20219351)
don't forget, you're going to have to slow down at some point, too
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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by interfixus on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @12:30PM (#20214856)
Now do some napkin math on the amount of gears and levers you need to reach such calculating power, mr. Babbage.
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Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne... by carapace on Tuesday June 18, 2019 @07:16PM (#20219405)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torchship

> Torchship (or torch ship) is a term used by Robert A. Heinlein in several of his science fiction novels and short stories to describe fictional rocket ships that can maintain high accelerations indefinitely, thus approaching the speed of light. The term has subsequently been used by other authors to describe similar kinds of fictional spaceships.

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