Interplanetary Travel

Fly Me to the Moon.

The two main motors used in space craft today are the; The VASIMR type ion drive, a very efficient but rather week thruster, with a max acceleration of around 1G. and The Nerva type fusion rocket, a very powerful but hungry thruster, with a max acceleration of around 10G. Although 5G is the usual military speed for non emergencies.

Military ships always have both kinds of thrusters. Civilian ships are less likely to have the fusion rockets, as they are a sizable expense. However all ships made at UN-Yards will have both drives, as transports may be pressed into fleet service. Note; that some kind of rocket is necessary to reach orbit, ion drives simply can not do it, they work very poorly (hardly at all) with in an atmosphere.

Space ships usually travel in a “strait line” accelerating half way then flipping over and decelerating to match velocity with their destination. The following chart is based on this kind of flight plan. To make a quick stop required deceleration at a much higher velocity (G-factor) than you had been using to accelerate. This is largely the reason military ships use 5G as their normal max.

Distance	Accel 1G	Accel 5G	Reference
0.001au	2.2 h	1 h	Earth to moon
0.005au	4.8 h	2.2 h	Earth to 100D H-limit
0.01au	6.8 h	3 h	Gas giant to moon
0.1au	22 h	9.6 h	Gas giant 100D H-limit
1 au	2.8 day	1.3 day	Earth to Venus, average
2 au	4 day	1.8 day	Earth to Mars, average
5 au	6.3 day	2.8 day	Earth to Jupiter, average
10 au	9 day	4 day	Earth to Saturn, average
50 au	20 day	9 day	Earth to Oort cloud ( Pluto orbit)

Distance is given in AU, astronomic units, the distance from Earth to the Sun, about 150 million KM. Because objects are constantly in motion, travel times will change slightly on any trip.

The 100D H-limit, refers to the distance one should be to safely make a jump to hyper space, that is 100xthe planet's diameter. Always a good deal past any moon the planet may have.

 To put this in perspective; 

A civilian travel agent will offer you a 3 hour flight to the moon.  With most space ports offering one flight every 8 hours. But if you are in the military, you would likely ride on the 1 hour flight.

Going to Mars? That is listed as a 4 day flight, during which time the gravity will be adjusted so you arrive already acclimatized.  There is usually 1 launch / day from most space ports. The military, of course, does the same in half the time, although launch schedules are not as predictable. 

 

  Below is the game book chart used for this information.