If you wanted to travel through space

[Traab]

What would be the minimum acceptable rate of speed you would want to be capable of moving at for each stage? By which I mean,

1) Inside the solar system
2) Inside the milky way
3) Outside the milky way

How many times the speed of light would you have to be moving at in each case before you would consider it a reasonable time frame to go from one place to another? For this exercise, ignore time dilation and such

[BWR]

Depends greatly on the method of conveyance, the cost and what we can do once we're there.
As it is, anything that could get to a nearby star in a lifetime or two would be very popular in the scientific community.
As for just tourist stuff, it would have to be no more than a year round trip, since we're ignoring time dilation. Don't want to get too estranged from friends, family, jobs, etc.

[Red Bear]

What would be the minimum acceptable rate of speed you would want to be capable of moving at for each stage? By which I mean,

1) Inside the solar system
2) Inside the milky way
3) Outside the milky way

How many times the speed of light would you have to be moving at in each case before you would consider it a reasonable time frame to go from one place to another? For this exercise, ignore time dilation and such

1) Inside the solar system I would find acceptable a speed of 0.10 c.
2) Inside the milky way I would find acceptable a speed of 1000 c.
3) Outside the milky way I would find acceptable a speed of 100 000 000 c.

[noparlpf]

What would be the minimum acceptable rate of speed you would want to be capable of moving at for each stage? By which I mean,

1) Inside the solar system
2) Inside the milky way
3) Outside the milky way

How many times the speed of light would you have to be moving at in each case before you would consider it a reasonable time frame to go from one place to another? For this exercise, ignore time dilation and such

I don't make trips that take more than three hours. So I'd have to be moving really really really fast.

[factotum]

I think it depends heavily on what sort of ship you're travelling in. If it's a Mercury capsule then you don't want to be flying around for very long; if it's the space-going version of an ocean liner then a longer, slower trip is more acceptable. I think you'd be best off defining how long you want the trip to take, then calculating the speed from that...

[Talanic]

A huge factor in space travel is how much acceleration you can handle. If you don't have inertial damping, you probably don't want to endure acceleration of more than 1.0 G. If you do have inertial damping, then your ability to accelerate past a point eventually degrades based on your power source. The faster you're going, the more it takes to increase your velocity even further.

With nothing to eat your inertia, you can still hit (.99etc) lightspeed with about a year of accelerating at 1.0 G. The problem is that in order to stop, you have to turn around and spend an equivalent amount of time slowing down.

Ideally you work out some form of warp drive, teleportation, or other instantaneous travel, but who knows if that'll ever be really possible?

[The Extinguisher]

What's reasonable?

If I'm just nipping off to Alpha Centuari for day shopping trip, or if I'm going there for a week long vacation I'm going to find different travel times reasonable.

It depends on how close everything is. If we can go galaxy hoping, I'd probably want everything in the Milky Way accessible in a few hours. But if the furthest we can go out is the Sirius system, I wouldn't have a problem going there in a couple months even (also provided the transport there was comfortable. I wouldn't want to be driving a car for a few months, that's for sure)

[TuggyNE]

History suggests that a few months or even a year of uncomfortable and dangerous travel is not out of the question for dedicated explorers, settlers, and merchants. For high volumes of travel, and for tourism and so forth, a few weeks is probably the maximum.

As such, in-system speeds don't need to be more than 1‰ c initially, or about 300km/s. In fact, many of our best tourist/trade destinations (the moon, Mars, Venus, the asteroid belt) are at the upper end of acceptable even at that speed, though 1% c wouldn't hurt.

In-galaxy speeds, to be practical in covering the whole thing, would need to be about 1000000% c. But if all you want is to cover a chunk of nearish space, well, 50% c is pretty good.

Out of galaxy, you basically need indefinite multipliers or a straight-up discontiguous transport of some sort.

[Ravens_cry]

What would be the minimum acceptable rate of speed you would want to be capable of moving at for each stage? By which I mean,

1) Inside the solar system
2) Inside the milky way
3) Outside the milky way

How many times the speed of light would you have to be moving at in each case before you would consider it a reasonable time frame to go from one place to another? For this exercise, ignore time dilation and such
Oh, but with time dilation, and you aren't planning on coming back, high enough percentages of the speed of light become acceptable for any journey.

[Cerussite]

Oh, but with time dilation, and you aren't planning on coming back, high enough percentages of the speed of light become acceptable for any journey.

Not really. If I'm visiting a friend, I wouldn't want to keep them waiting a century or two.

[Ravens_cry]

Not really. If I'm visiting a friend, I wouldn't want to keep them waiting a century or two.
Ah, you have a point. My thought was a journey of exploration in a world where humanity was still relegated to the solar system.

[Traab]

Oh, but with time dilation, and you aren't planning on coming back, high enough percentages of the speed of light become acceptable for any journey.

Yeah but I wanted to avoid that complication, so for the duration, pretend it doesnt happen. This is straightforward, how fast would you want to go to travel in those three areas, in other words, what would be a reasonable time frame for travel in your opinion, and how fast would you have to be capable of going to stay in that time frame?

[Ravens_cry]

Yeah but I wanted to avoid that complication, so for the duration, pretend it doesnt happen. This is straightforward, how fast would you want to go to travel in those three areas, in other words, what would be a reasonable time frame for travel in your opinion, and how fast would you have to be capable of going to stay in that time frame?
I think travel times of about a year are very reasonable, longer if you can expect can expect to be able to have ansible (FTL) communications. out of solar system, even if it takes a few hours.

[Karoht]

If it was a one way trip (I plan to settle where we stop), I would be fine traveling for as long as a year at a time, maybe two or 3 years. 5 years would be pushing it, but I would put up with it. 10 years of non-stop traveling and I would probably not really care much about the destination beyond that. This assumes I'm conscious for the entire journey.

If I am unconscious for the entire journey, I would be okay with losing maybe 10 years of my life, so long as my body doesn't turn to jello from severe atrophy by the time we arrive. 20 years of my life? Maybe? 30 years? Now it's just too long. All of this assumes that I age normally during the trip.

If I am unconscious and in a near perfect form of suspended animation (no atrophy, no insanity, hardly know the time has passed), then if I am leaving earth, I'm leaving. I don't care how long it takes, I'm probably leaving everything behind anyway.