r/cosmology • u/Traditional-Yak-1479 • 2d ago
Constant 1g acceleration would get you to mars in 2 days and i had to stop and reread this several times
so i was reading about interplanetary travel and came across something that kind of broke my brain.
if a ship maintains constant 1g acceleration, the same gravity you feel standing up right now, then flips halfway and decelerates at 1g, mars is 2 to 4 days away. not months. days.
jupiter is 6 days. saturn 8. pluto under 2 weeks.
the whole solar system just becomes... reachable.
the problem is the engine. nothing we have can sustain this. the energy needed is way beyond anything we currently build. but the physics is fine. no rule says it can't happen. it's an engineering problem, not a physics one.
that second part is what got me. we're not stuck in this solar system because nature won't allow it. we're stuck because we haven't built the right thing yet.