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Re: starship-design: HIGHLY OPTIMIZED TOLERANCE
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 . . .