Hey, everybody!
I generally don't rear my ugly head into this particular forum, but not because I don't like real science, I'm just a busy man and I usually just read about real science stuff rather than discuss it...
Anyway, I'm mulling over a project. I have tried my hand at writing science fiction and I have a great idea for a story, but part of the background of the story involves a number of colony ships having left Earth for parts beyond using large ships traveling at sub-light speeds. Although there will be some stretching of real science in this story, I want the elements that are not explicitly fictional to have grounding in real math. I want to be bound by the real rules of real science as much as possible.
So here's where I am hoping to get some help:
I want to know how long it'll take to get from Earth to Colony X at a given velocity. I want to know both how long it seems to take from Earth's vantage as well as the elapsed time for the colonists.
I've been doing a bit of reading on the subject and the math involved seems slightly above my training (being a high school graduate and an art school college drop-out didn't prepare me for this as well as I would have hoped.) So, does anyone know of a handy calculator someplace on the Internet? Or might someone be able to explain the variables to me in simple "captain dummy talk" so I can figure it out myself?
I may need to figure out more than a dozen such voyages so I'd prefer to know how to reckon it on my own if possible.
Thanks for any replies!
--Alex
I generally don't rear my ugly head into this particular forum, but not because I don't like real science, I'm just a busy man and I usually just read about real science stuff rather than discuss it...
Anyway, I'm mulling over a project. I have tried my hand at writing science fiction and I have a great idea for a story, but part of the background of the story involves a number of colony ships having left Earth for parts beyond using large ships traveling at sub-light speeds. Although there will be some stretching of real science in this story, I want the elements that are not explicitly fictional to have grounding in real math. I want to be bound by the real rules of real science as much as possible.
So here's where I am hoping to get some help:
I want to know how long it'll take to get from Earth to Colony X at a given velocity. I want to know both how long it seems to take from Earth's vantage as well as the elapsed time for the colonists.
I've been doing a bit of reading on the subject and the math involved seems slightly above my training (being a high school graduate and an art school college drop-out didn't prepare me for this as well as I would have hoped.) So, does anyone know of a handy calculator someplace on the Internet? Or might someone be able to explain the variables to me in simple "captain dummy talk" so I can figure it out myself?
I may need to figure out more than a dozen such voyages so I'd prefer to know how to reckon it on my own if possible.
Thanks for any replies!
--Alex
