How fast are SE4 ships. OT: How big is a system?

[Rollo]

Here is something interesting. Or maybe not. Decide for yourself...

I was interested on how fast ships can move in SE4. So I did some research and some rough calculations.

So for the basis of the calculation, I assumed that that a SE4 vessel can cross a system in one month (that is speed 13 in SE4 terms).
But how big is a system in terms of light days?

Let's look at the the solar system:
The edge of the solar system is hard to define. Is it the outer orbit of pluto? Or the outer edge of the Kuiper Belt? Or the heliopause?
here is some data that I gathered:
The average orbit of Pluto is 39.5 AU (astronomical unit, average distance from sun-earth). reference: http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=374
That equals about 5.5 light hours. ref: http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/pcmain.html

The Kupier Belt lies between 30 and 100 AU. ref: http://seds.lpl.arizona.edu/nineplanets/nineplanets/kboc.html
but some objects lie even further than that. here is a nice picture about that: http://dosxx.colorado.edu/Pluto/Kuiper.jpg

The heliopause is hard to determine. The upper limit is approximated at 90 to 120 AU. ref: http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/plasma-wave/voyager/heliopr.html and http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020624.html

So with this data let's say that a system has a diameter of 160 AU. That is 4 times the average orbit of pluto, which was 5.5 light hrs. 4 times 5.5 light hours is aprox. 1 light day.

Conclusion: SE4 ships can cover a distance of 1 light day in one month. That means that the ships can travel at about 1/30 of the speed of light. Or in other terms: 3.33% of c (speed of light).

Hope you find this interesting. I sure enjoyed doing the research http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .
Rollo

[ January 27, 2003, 01:41: Message edited by: Rollo ]

[Ragnarok]

Hmm, very interesting. Thanks for doing that research Rollo. Could come in handy some day. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Slick]

I find that interesting. As for comparison also, escape velocity for the earth is about 17,000 miles/hr. c = 186000 miles/sec.

If you do the conVersion, escape velocity is on the order of 2x10^-5 c.

So our current spacecraft speeds are roughly 1000 times slower than SE4 spacecraft.

Slick.

[ January 26, 2003, 17:24: Message edited by: Slick ]

[Kamog]

Geo has made some calculations regarding SEIV ship speeds and light speed, a few months ago, in this thread:

OT: How fast is light speed in SE4 terms? -> Maximum possible speed? -> insanity (http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=23;t=007281;p=4)

Very interesting! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[Magnum357]

Actually guys, this dosen't supprise me at all. Space Empires is actually based on the old board game called "Starfire" by task Force games. Ships in that game could didn't use conventional Vector thrust engines like we have today. They are too combersome and would require too much fuel to get to any fast Velocity to be practical. Starfire had the concept of "Feild Propulsion" with Thrust of Ion Engines. This Feild would allow the ship to reach high velocities (up to 10% of the speed of light or "c") and able to perform fast maneuvers with internal gravity systems (otherwise the crew would be turned into tomato paste).

I think the same thing applied in SE. ships use some sort of "Feild" to allow it too move up to 2 to 3% of the speed of light. This feild might warp space some, or maybe it decreased the mass of the ship or something.