Nothing in Space - Travel?

Question

Maybe a stupid question, but.... If there is nothing in space, (you can be right next to a large explosion and not get hurt unless debris actually hits you) then how come it takes so long to travel in space as opposed to instantaneously (if there is nothing seperating point A and point B)? There has to be something there, right? Thanks for your help!

All great answers, thank you. You brought up some excellent points in my inadequate knoweledge. I'm more the amateur paleontologist, not astronomer. Thanks!

Answer 1

Well Sir:

Your question has to do with distance which must be traveled to get from Point A to Point B. Regardless of the fact that space is a vacuum, you can only travel as fast as you can accelerate your vehicle. At this time the fastest we can travel with any man made vehicle is about 30,000 to 50,000 Miles Per Hour. The distances in space are millions and millions of miles depending on where you desire to go. There is no such thing as instantaneous travel. So until some new breakthrough in space travel occurs, you have to take the total distance from here to there and divide it by say 30,000 Miles per hour to get the total flight hours running at top speed.

Answer 2

The fastest speed yet attained by any man-made vehicle is around 70,000 Miles Per Hour by two of the small, unmaned space probes launched about thirty years ago.

Proxima is the closest star to our Sun at only 4.3 Light Years away. A Light Year is the distance light travels in a year which is 5.8 billion miles.That would make Proxima 25 billion miles away. With the Cosmos Cruiser traveling ten times faster than anything yet attained , that is over 700,000 Miles per hour - the trip should take only around 4100 years give or take a little, more or less. That is only 2/3 the recorded history of human civilization, but who is counting ?

The ten-fold increase in speed will take a one hundred fold increase in energy to just to achieve that. In addition the payload will not be only an instrument package but people and their complex life support system, much greater than anything yet used for the very local excursions made so far, even to the Moon.

To make a round trip within one human lifespan will require another 100 fold speed increase to over a 70 million MPH average to one tenth the speed of light. The 10,000 x energy increase for just that needed speed would be immense. Beside that in order to return you must slow down to slingshot and speed back up in order to come back. Of course this is not even considering the massive energy source needed for landing and then returning form the surface. But this is a sun not a planet. There aren't any accessible planets except the locals.

Just forget about it and watch Star Wars. Beyond a fiasco to a local planet, nobody is really going to go anywhere, ever. Look at the pretty pictures from the Hubble and beyond that don't believe a word they say about going on a cosmic trip.

Answer 3

Space is not completely nothing, it does contain the space in which you have to travel, as well as a few hydrogen atoms and other elements from stars long dead. The propagation of an explosion in space would be different than that on earth, but still have a nasty kick, otherwise all the propulsion systems used on satellites and spaceships would not work.

Answer 4

Space is something. There is lots and lots of space in space. And even travelling at the speed of light it takes over 4 years to travel to the nearest stars. And it takes an infinite amount of energy to reach lightspeed with a spacecraft and since there isn´t an infinite amount of energy in the whole universe nothing with mass can achieve lightspeed. So it takes time to get from A to B.

Answer 5

OK, you're right; it is kinda stupid.
t = d/v
The distances are so incomprehensibly greater than any earth reference, that even going tens of thousands of mph still takes months or years to get there.
Do the math.

If there were anything IN space, it wouldn't be called space. Any resistive medium would require the thrust devices to be on continuously, an event we know to be contrary to fact.

Answer 6

space is in space, (vacuum) distance is still a very big factor. there is much separating point A & B. And yes if you were next to a very large explosion you would die. Think about supernovae.

Answer 7

i think of that interstellar commute by ability of making use of classic ability(rocket deliver/commute) is inherently incorrect and is doomed to fail as a plausible technique of exploring the universe. there's a greater advantageous way, yet we maximum probable lack the technologies. possibly area commute demands some unique new concept that makes use of yet another version of arithmetic and logic different than the classic varieties that we use immediately...