how long would it take us to travel one light year?

Question

i was wondering since they said that planet with possible life was 50 light years away.

Answer 1

that would depend on how fast we were going.

the speed of light is about 300,000 kilometers per second. or 1080000000 kilometers per hour. 25920000000 kilometers per day. 9460800000000 kilometers per year, this is the definition of a light year.

btw the earthlike planet is 20 light years away, not 50

if you went 100 kph (kilometers per hour) it would take you 94608000000 hours or 10800000 years to go one light year.

at the speed of sound _430.29 m/s, 1549. kph it would take 697204 years to travel one light year.

the speed of a vehicle in low earth orbit is about mach 25, even at this speed it would take 40,000 years to travel one light year.

so we need to invent some more powerful engines if we plan on going any significant distance outside of our solar system.

Answer 2

Alot of people cant quite grasp this concept. :p
anyway frist off, that planet is only just over 20.5 Light years away not 50. also there maybe many earth like planets even closer. :)
Now to even do this we need to develop countless amounts technology, that could take up to 100 years to develop.

first of all we will not make light speed but we could get close
but if you take in to account the ark of speed man has be moving from the transport craft we have invented from the bike to super cars to supersonic Jet aircraft to the the space rockets, it will take 5,000+ years to develop this sort of close to light speed tavel, even with our high speed gain trend.
but hey 5000 years ago we where building pyramids in egypt :)

back to here and now,,
The best electric propulsion system we have is the ion engine, which obtains the highest degree of conversion of electric power into thrust, highest specific impulse (around 3000secs) and the longest operational lifetime.
This is the system of choice to power Deep Space 1.

Deep Space 1 is the NASA New Millennium Program first spacecraft, it produces 0.09 Newtons of thrust and has a specific impulse of 3300secs (over 32,000m/s), with a service life of 8000 hours. The propellant gas in Deep Space 1 is xenon, which is as good as any gas for this function.

the ion propulsion system on DS1 imparts about 3.6 km/s to the spacecraft.
that planets system is 20.5 light years away.
light moves at just under 300000 kilometers per second
:( it wont happen! it would take a few millenniums to reach that point in space.


If we could, In the short term time frame and put the minds and the money of the world on the project and some way get the speed much greater than what we have at the moment, it would take more than 100 years more like 300-400+ years.
so until we get much faster we are going nowhere. :(

Answer 3

In 1 year the light travels 9.454255e+12 km So the answer is 4.1504179e+13

Answer 4

That depends on how fast one is traveling. At the current top speed of spacecraft, it would take several lifetimes to travel the distance. A light year is the distance that light travels in one year. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second, so a light year is a looooong way.

Answer 5

It would take one year.To travel 50 light years would take 50 years. If you want to know how far that is, do this, multiply the speed of light 180,000 miles per second by 60. That's light minutes. Now multiply by 60 again. That's light hours. Now multiply by 24. Than gives you a light day. Multiply by 365.25, that gives you one light year. Multiply by 50, that's the distance in miles to the planet.
If you're planning on going, be sure to take something to snack on.

Answer 6

at the speed of light it would take one year to go one light year or 50 yrs to get to that planet

Answer 7

The top speed of rockets such as those that drive the space shuttle is around 8,000 m/s.

The speed of light is around 3 x 10^8 m/s - which is around 37,500 times faster.

So to travel a light year in the space shuttle would take 37,500 years.

Answer 8

It takes "one year" to travel one light yeat (about 6 trillion miles). The planet you are interested in is about 50 years away.

Answer 9

Depends on how fast your going.

A light year is the distance light travels in one year. So light travels at about 300,000 Km/sec.

Basically after some simple multiplication it equals about 10 trillion Km.

So find the speed at which you want to travel and do some division.

Example: Traveling at 15km/sec (900 km/hour) it would take us 11,111,111,111 hours.

Answer 10

Light travels 9,460,730,472,580,800 metres in 365 days.
A human doesnt live long enough to travel this distance at current technology speeds.