Antimatter Breakthrough Could Lead to Starships

[Tanada]

Main problem is that it would take 10 millions seconds (119 days) to accelerate at 1 g and 119 days to decellerate while approaching, unless you want to smash it against Mars at 10% of c.

Lets say that astronauts can take for long periods of time 2 g (I know that they can handle 5 g but only for minutes).

This would still result in 4 months journey (there and back).
Not very impressive.
With current technology you can aim at 2 years.

Uhhhm, NO!

Travel time from Earth to Mars at 1 g of acceleration is 198288 seconds assuming a distance of 4.827 E7 km from Earth parking orbit to Mars parking orbit and flipping from acceleration to deceleration at midpoint of the journey. 198288/3600=55.08 Hours=2 days, 7 hours, 4 minutes, 48 seconds. Or something close to that I might have goofed something minor in calculating but it is under 3 days no matter how you slice it.

You never get close to 10% of light speed because Mars is way way to close of a target, as you pointed out it takes nearly four months to get going that fast at 1g of acceleration.

[vision-master]

You all r thinking 3D

[EnergyUnlimited]

Uhhhm, NO!

Travel time from Earth to Mars at 1 g of acceleration is 198288 seconds assuming a distance of 4.827 E7 km from Earth parking orbit to Mars parking orbit and flipping from acceleration to deceleration at midpoint of the journey. 198288/3600=55.08 Hours=2 days, 7 hours, 4 minutes, 48 seconds. Or something close to that I might have goofed something minor in calculating but it is under 3 days no matter how you slice it.

You never get close to 10% of light speed because Mars is way way to close of a target, as you pointed out it takes nearly four months to get going that fast at 1g of acceleration.

You are correct.
I overlooked fact that Mars is too near for that to work.
Basic mistake, I suppose.

However hey, that could qualify me to become designer of Martian probe
Few of them, notably Martian Polar Lander, have crashed against the planet due to distance miscalculation (here we had imperial/metric error).

[anador]

I've been hearing the 'Red Planet' of Mars and the pictures we all look @ have been altered in color by Nasa.

The atmosphere of Mars is really B-L-U-E.



Amateur astronomists with today's tech, do NOT see a 'Red Planet'.

You know thats just b/c the older rovers had weak signaling and it was difficult to reconstruct the images in true color..... right?

NASA didnt intentionally alter them

we only now have true color images since the stronger signals from spirit and oppurtuity
http://mars.spherix.com/spie2003/SPIE_2003_Color_Paper.htm