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I had an idea for a story I don't think anyone has written, although I'm probably wrong, as it seems obvious. I had Mars, ho!, and a voyage to Earth, and I thought, "it's time we left this solar system." I mean, I'd spent a lot of time on Mars and several of the larger asteroids, what's next?
Research for Grommler informed me that you could get to Sirius and back in a little over ten years, although a hundred years would pass on Mars during that time, so I thought "Why not Alpha Proxima?" Note: although college research prohibits using encyclopedias as sources, researching a fiction story needs no citations.
I found that the calculations I got from Wikipedia for a trip to Sirius at 1g thrust were wrong (so sue me) but at that amount of thrust you could get to Alpha Proxima in a year, so I'll make it two. Of course, it will seem a lot longer to us here, but I haven't figured out how much yet. Math guys?
Proxima B is in that star's habitable zone, but Jesus, what a shitty name for a planet! It will probably be hundreds of years before we get to the point where we can produce that much thrust for that long a time, and by then we will have had an awful lot of probes to our actually existing but poorly named planet.
Proxima Centauri is a red dwarf that rotates around A and B, which should make some really cool visuals for a movie set on that planet, and also a hint at what its name will be in a few hundred years. It Certainly won't be "B". Bee, maybe? Could life begin on a planet like that? I have my doubts, but could be wrong.
Also, the star's sisters have more "normal" star names, Rigil Kentaurus (Alpha Centauri A), and Toliman (B).
Anybody have a good name for this planet? And its poorly named star? Or should I just name it the same as Isaac Asimov did in Foundation and Earth? I've forgotten what it was, I'll have to read the book again.
I named the CEO of the Green-Osbourne Transportation Company after the guy who thought of whores in space as we were discussing Nobots in Felber's beer garden and a coven of crack whores walked down the street, and gave him an acknowledgement. If I use your planet name and you wish, I'll do the same for you.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by billbellum on Saturday February 04, @06:45AM (15 children)
There is an episode of Star Trek, the Original Series, where some disembodied aliens, from the Andromeda Galaxy, take over members of the crew of the Enterprise. Standard Science Fiction Fare. But, once they take over the ship, and upgrade the warp engines with their superior tech, they realize that the time to reach the Andromeda Galaxy vastly exceeds the life-span of the humans they have commandeered. Space it really, really, big. Nearest Galaxy, Andromeda, 2.2 million light-years away.
==Let's do the math: LIGHT= 186,000 miles per second. x60= a light minute. x60 =a light-hour. x24= a light day. x365=a light year. So, 2.2 milliion light years =? Left as an exercise for Soylentils, especially khallow and Runaway.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04, @08:12AM (5 children)
If you actually watched Star Trek you'd know that's irrelevant with warp drive.
(Score: 0, Informative) by billbellum on Saturday February 04, @08:35PM (4 children)
Warp 9, assuming the analogy to Mach speeds holds, is nine times the speed of light? So, 2.2 million, divided by nine, is still a lot of warp speed light years.
And, why is my original post referencing Star Trek spam modded? Not like it is off topic.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 05, @04:04AM
If you knew Star Trek, you'd know that the reason the Kelvans stopped and turned the Enterprise around in By Any Other Name was that taking on human form caused them to also start taking on human behaviors. By the time they reached Andromeda, the Kelvans would have been outsiders to their own people.
Also, the speed of warp 9 depends on a number of things. For one, are we talking about the TOS or TNG scales?
In the TOS scale, warp 9 is 729 times the speed of light. In the TNG scale, warp 9 is around 1,516 times the speed of light. In both cases, the local conditions of space and subspace can affect how the warp factor relates to the speed of light. The TNG Technical Manual indicates that warp 9 is 1,516 cochranes, which is actually a measure of the strength of the warp field, and under normal conditions, would be around 1,516 times the speed of light. Although the reasons are not described in alpha canon, it is clear that the speeds achieved are often much faster than what the warp scale indicates. This is true in both TOS and TNG. In the TOS episode That Which Survives, the Enterprise achieves a speed far greater than the quoted maximum of warp 8 or 512 times the speed of light. The speeds were fast enough that the Enterprise-D would have been able to travel from J-25 to Federation space in 3-4 days, and Voyager could have returned to Earth within a couple of months.
Regardless, warp 9 is most certainly orders of magnitude faster than nine times the speed of light.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday February 05, @05:19PM (2 children)
It seems that others think that they know who you are too. You can always email me if you want to contest the deductions that they have made.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 06, @07:48PM (1 child)
Email the Grand Censor? To what end? He already thinks he knows who all the pure ACs are.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 07, @07:35AM
And who is this Billbellows, who knows so much about Star Trek?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday February 04, @02:34PM
Let me guess, they then downgrade the warp engines by the end of the episode?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday February 04, @05:06PM
The story will be a trip to Alpha Proxima, not Andomeda. However, I did have a story about Andomeda Aliens [mcgrewbooks.com] visiting the MIlky Way. Spoiler: they live a REALLY long time!
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 04, @05:36PM (3 children)
You betray your imperialism.
Most of us now use the easier number, 3x10^8 m/s. Or somewhat less accurately 1 billion km/hr.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday February 06, @07:35PM (2 children)
As a teen, I memorized it as 186,281 miles per second. But later discover it is really closer to 186,282.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Thursday February 09, @02:59PM (1 child)
I've never been able to memorize, which is why to multiply 7x8 I would multiply 4x4 and subtract 7. Never made it past 5 on the multiplication tables. Now I just pull out my phone and use its calculator.
I could never see the point of memorization, either. I have the list, why can't I just look at it? Plus, sometimes the data are found to be incorrect and you're stuck with what you memorized, as you pointed out. Which was a problem for me in public school, where they're not interested in your learning or understanding, but only memorization of facts. I never liked history class until I took a required history course in college; public school was "memorize these names and dates" with no indication of why those names or dates were important.
They didn't teach me much in public school once I was good at reading. I'd read the textbook on the first day and spend the rest of the year bored at the redundancy. I once got an A+ on a high school science paper because the teacher admitted that what I had written was over his head; I had read the entire Encyclopaedia Britannica when I was 12.
Now, college actually TAUGHT. The physics classes were the coolest.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday February 09, @03:39PM
I had to drill on and memorize multiplication tables in 3rd grade. This was prior to electronic calculators. I think there were calculators but they were big, bulky and extremely expensive.
In hindsight I feel all the better for it. I am able to do many calculations in my head without a calculator. As I got older I learned a lot of tricks, like your multiplying 8x8 and subtracting 7. I also seem to 'visualize' in my mind how pairs of digits add to 10, such as 2 and 8, and imagine them "fitting" together like Lego bricks. This makes a lot of addition and subtraction very easy. Which of course assists doing more complex multiplications in my head.
However whenever I need to, or feel like it, I'm never without a calculator. I have had a calculator with me continuously since about 1974. At one point in the mid to late 1980s I had quite a collection.
I share your pain about history. I was into writing computer programs at that point. I could see no use for history. As I got older I could understand the importance. But it wasn't really taught properly in high school.
IMO by high school, it would be good to be able to group people who are going to go into STEM fields, to have courses more focused on that and a bit lighter on the humanities. And also vice versa for students who will end up as the floor manager at J.C. Penny. But more seriously, students who might be artists, musicians, actors, historians, museum curators, etc.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by turgid on Tuesday February 07, @09:44PM (2 children)
When you travel at c, all distances shrink to zero. Therefore, all journeys become infinitesimally short. A photon experiences its entire universe all at once. An external observer would see the traveller's clock as being stopped. Light is frozen in time. When the spaceship accelerated to c, you would see it becoming red shifted and any clocks on it would get slower and slower until in the faintest glimmer of red light, they'd be stopped and the image would fade away. The same thing happens when you fall over the event horizon of a black hole.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 3, Interesting) by DannyB on Thursday February 09, @03:44PM
When falling into a black hole, unintentionally, I have wondered if there is some point where you have crossed the line of not being able to escape, yet still not crossed the event horizon. That is, falling in is now inevitable. You cannot get out of it or escape it. (ship not capable, etc) But you still have some moments or longer before crossing the event horizon. Can you tell precisely when you do cross the event horizon? How long does it take before spaghettification is significant enough to be noticable? If it were not for spaghettification, you would observe the entire universe begin speeding up faster and faster until you witness the end of the universe. I wonder how much of that show you you get to see before spaghettification.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday February 09, @03:53PM
Yes, but not only can you not surpass C, you can't even get very close to it. Traveling at the speed of light would be walking to Alpha Centauri as fast as walking to your kitchen. Faster, because you can't get any faster than instantaneous. At half C it would take eight years to get to Proxima Centauri, and that's as if the entire trip was at half C, clearly an impossibility.
Here's a graph. [imgur.com] Since they're Martians, the ship likely will be going no faster than 1/2 G or the passengers would complain. Imagine living all your life in a dome on Mars then visiting Earth [mcgrewbooks.com] where there's three times the gravity you've ever experienced!
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience