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 Originally Posted by MadMojoMonkey
There is not enough energy in the universe to accelerate any massive object to the speed of light. Nor is there enough to slow any massive object even the tiniest fraction if it is already moving at the speed of light. Such an object would have infinite momentum.
My point was that you couldn't maintain a constant rate of acceleration of 1g for very long (within interstellar travel time frames). For some reason when I first approached this problem I just assumed it would take 500 years or whatever for 9.8 m/s/s to add up to relativistic speeds. Not so.
One thing is that it seems like you could achieve reasonably high speeds (say 0.1c for example) by applying a small thrust over a period of years that would only require a steady stream of a (relatively) small amount of energy. Could solar panels approach the needs of this, or at least make a dent so not so much fuel is needed?
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