Timeline for What is the most effective way to brake from interstellar speeds?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
8 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oct 1, 2017 at 23:29 | comment | added | Donald Hobson | In the smallest orbit that doesn't go into the star, the speed is 0.003c | |
| Sep 11, 2015 at 20:07 | comment | added | user | If you can get the small craft up to 0.6c "briefly", then you can get it up to 0.6c "indefinitely" (ignoring the effects of, for example, bombardment of microscopic interstellar dust). In spaceflight, once you have reach escape velocity, there is very little to nothing that will slow you down, so you can just turn off the engines and coast along your current orbit at whatever velocity you have built up. | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 22:05 | comment | added | darkflame | I aware you need thrust when there is no medium. By the word "steer" I meant "apply thrust to make the ship slowly point more in that direction then the direction it would normally without". Isn't the term steer used in space then? Pretty sure I have heard it used with regard to firing thrusters. The idea was simply rather then fire them halfway to slow down to a stop, you instead use them to loop around the star on a very big oribit, with the people already left on a shuttle. | |
| Aug 31, 2015 at 11:27 | comment | added | Luaan | "Steering" doesn't really work in space. If you have nothing to push off, you simply need to change your velocity the old-fashioned way - by using thrust. There are ways to "push off" planets/stars, but it only works well at near orbital-velocities - compared to your 0.6c, this is a tiny drop, and isn't going to help any. | |
| Aug 30, 2015 at 21:05 | history | edited | darkflame | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
slightly changed the answer, as what I describe isn't really a orbit
|
| Aug 30, 2015 at 20:51 | comment | added | darkflame | unassisted, but I assumed use of the big crafts steering mechanism. Would not the (vastly) bigger distances involved give more time to "steer in" enough? I guess it wouldn't be a orbit any more - but is not the potential of some sweat spot between orbital distance? Where the force you can divert to turning is enough to put you eventually into a orbital path. If not see part of peters answer - dump the big ship completely. Either way getting rid of most of the mass seems the better way to go here. | |
| Aug 30, 2015 at 20:00 | comment | added | Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' | If you want to put the ship on a big orbit around the star, it needs to have a small momentum. The orbital speed is proportional to the inverse square root of the orbit radius. $0.6c$ is well within the star. To put the ship in orbit at, say, the same distance as Earth from the Sun, you'd need to slow it down to about $10^{-4}c$. | |
| Aug 30, 2015 at 19:28 | history | answered | darkflame | CC BY-SA 3.0 |