Re: starship-design: HIGHLY OPTIMIZED TOLERANCE

[Curtis Manges <clmanges@worldnet.att.net>]

Steve VanDevender wrote:

> Curtis Manges writes:
>  > It's a trick of perspective. I've heard they're actually boogyin'
>  > along at a pretty good clip (I don't recall how fast). In fact, the
>  > velocity of a target star may make it harder to get to than we
>  > think. Remember that the universe is still expanding, and most of it
>  > is (wisely, perhaps ;-) ) running away from us.
>
> Typical velocities of nearby stars relative to the sun are in tens of
> km/s.  The expansion of the universe is only significant on an
> intergalactic scale; orbital motion around the galactic center dominates
> the motions of stars in our neighborhood.
>
> While you'd have to take the relative motion of your destination star
> into account, its relative velocity is going to be pretty small compared
> to your spacecraft's velocity if you're planning on getting there in
> anything less than thousands of years.

Thanks for straightening me out on that. Would I be right in guessing that
the time scale is about similar to the precession of Earth's polar axis? I
know Polaris wasn't always the pole star . . .