Re:Two potentially life-friendly planets found orbiting a ne...
by dragonwriter on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @09:48AM
(#20223286)
> If we had the political will, the Orion design could get people there in, what, 200 years, and that's with '70s technology.
No,the version of Orion that is mostly an integration challenge over 1970s tech would take almost 7 times that long to get to Alpha Centauri as a missile (i.e., without turnover to decelerate to relative rest.)
The even more speculative version was estimated to cut that by a factor for ten to only 133 years, but that's still to a target 1/3 the distance of this one, and still without deceleration.
No,the version of Orion that is mostly an integration challenge over 1970s tech would take almost 7 times that long to get to Alpha Centauri as a missile (i.e., without turnover to decelerate to relative rest.)
The even more speculative version was estimated to cut that by a factor for ten to only 133 years, but that's still to a target 1/3 the distance of this one, and still without deceleration.