How long would it take to get to Gliese 581c at a gradual acceleration and deceleration approaching gravity.?

Question

Since it's 20.5 light years away, it would take a little over 20,000 years to get there in a slow flat mach 1 zero gravity environment. A constantly increasing acceleration to midpoint would give the inhabitants of the spaceship the gravity of earth, gradually increasing to that of Gliese 581c. At midpoint, the inhabitants would experience a short period of weightlessness while the ship turns around before it begins to decelerate in reverse fashion.

To simplify the equasion, I'll allow a constant acceleration and deceleration at Gliese's gravitational rate (1.6 times that of Earth).

Answer 1

Accelerating at 1.6G, or even 1G, until you were half way there and then decelerating for the other half of the trip would result in you going over 4,000 times the speed of light at the midpoint, according to classical mechanics, but of course relativity tells you that you will only get up to 99% the speed of light or something like that. So how long it would take would depend on whose clock you used. The clock in the space ship would tell you that you made it in less than 20 years, as if you had exceeded the speed of light, but the clock on Earth would say it took longer than 20 years.

Answer 2

There was an article on line I read recently about just that which had done the math and it was still a huge amount of time. The problems though are huge from a physics standpoint. As you start going faster you get heavier as you approach light speed, the huge amount of energy needed and our exposure to it's harmful effects, ect. It is easier to spin a ship and use centrifugal force for gravity and for now to choose closer destinations. And I'll say it again, the best kept travel secret holiday place to visit is....(shhhhh.....)(looks around to see who's listening) ("MARS")

Answer 3

Your numbers are way off. At the speed of the shuttle (17,000 mph) which is equivalent to almost Mach 23 which means nothing outside the atmosphere, it would take you 800,000 years to get there. Accelerating and decelerating at a bearable speed would lower it but there's no propulsion system to get you there. You couldn't haul the fuel.