Lets say that 1.6 km=1 mile,how long in years would it take a rocket going 17,000 mph to reach Proxima?...?

Question

Also, why hasn't anybody attempted this journey?

Answer 1

Do the math yourself.....no-one would live long enough to make the journey.

Answer 2

Proxima Centauri is 26 trillion miles away.

When you do the sum, you will realise why nobody had gone.

Look up voyager 2. It has left the Solar System after 30+ years travel. After you pass Pluto, Proxima Centauri is another 8000 times the distance. It is around a quarter million times the distance to the sun (astronomical units).

So, your rocket would take 10s of thousands of years.

Also, let's get things in perspective: only 9 manned probes have ever ventured beyond Earth's orbit:

Apollos 8, 10, 11 to 17.

And no humans have been beyond Earth orbit since Apollo17 in 1972.

Go read about the space program.

PS Polloloco's math following this, is very suspect.

Answer 3

A long time ago, Arthur C. Clarke calculated that it wouldn't be worth launching an interstellar probe any time soon because over the next few decades, high-speed rocket technology would improve so fast that rockets launched a few years later would overtake it. Ray Kurzweil's predictions of rapidly accelerating technological advance in the next few years confirm this. The answer to your question is that it would take your rocket about 190 000 years to reach Proxima. It's a safe bet that within a few decades we'll have fusion powered rockets that can reach near-light speeds, so they'll only take about 5 years for the trip. Even with today's technology, if we were to spend a ridiculously high percentage of the world's GDP on this one project, say a few trillion dollars, we could probably build a fission powered rocket that would get there in less than a century.

Answer 4

Proxima Centauri is the star nearest Earth. It is located 4.22 light-years from Earth.

At 17,500 mph, the velocity required to achieve low Earth orbit, it would take 160,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri.

Even Helios II, the fastest probe we've ever built, travelling at 151,600 mph would take 18,000 years to reach Proxima Centauri.

Given the technology available now or in the near future, it is absolutely impossible to travel to Proxima Centauri in a time frame that is useful to humans. To travel to Proxima Centauri using the most efficient rockets available, the Space Shuttle SSMEs, in less than 900 years would require that you consume the entire universe as propellant.

We will not be able, IMHO, to travel anywhere in interstellar space unless we have a breakthrough in physics AND technology that will allow the development of propellantless propulsion systems.

Please see the excellent website "Warp Drive, When?", linked below, for more details.

Answer 5

Proxima Centauri is aproximately 24,673,327,028,296.1 miles away. Based upon a very slow cruising speed of 17,000 miles an hour, it would take 165,681.75 years to get there.

I think you ought to pick up the pace a bit to at least 3/4c and get there in 5.6 years. You'll probably need an ion drive though.

Answer 6

To solve this problem we need to figure out how far Proxima Centauri is.

A quick google search shows Proxima Centauri is 4.22 light years away.

Now we figure out how many hours in a year.

365 * 24 = 8760 hours

multiply this by 4.22

36,967.2 hours to get to Proxima at the speed of light.

The speed of light is 670,616,629 mph

Multiply these two to find how far in mph.

4.49726663 × 10^17 miles

Divide by 17000 to find out how many hours.

3.21233331 × 10^13 hours

As you can see this will take a VERY long time.

If we convert this to years
3.70511339 × 10^9 years, or about 3.7 trillion years.

Answer 7

Although many here have given thoughtful answers it seems that everyone has forgotten about the role of relativistic time dilation especially at speeds of >0.6 light speed. Given an ion engine achieving say 0.75 light speed - although it would appear to observers from earth that the flight took about 6 years. The astronauts themselves would only have experienced about 3.5 years to have passed. If we could reach 0.9 light speed the results are even more dramatic. At 0.9 c the trip would take only several weeks from the spaceships perspective.

Answer 8

Hi. To Nick, Apollo 13 was manned. Proxima Centauri is not the best choice because it's so small. Maybe Sirius?

Answer 9

Not only that, but how would you plan to provide energy for that long? Currently, this just isn't logical or feasible.

Answer 10

166,500 years.
Why hasn't anybody attempted the journey? Ha ha haha haHa ha ha!!