Bah! An enginnering challenge.

As is an engine that can provide years worth of 1G accelleration for a spacecraft that can be self-sufficent for years.

Just feed the astronauts baked beans and point them towards the new planet.

There are also the problems of kidney failure, bone loss, heart failure...that sort of thing...ANES.

A 1G accelleration avoids that, IIRC.


Though, actually, it occurs to me that they would probably want to get there a bit faster by gradually increasing the Gs so that they match the other planet by the time they get there.

Hmmm would five earth masses equal five times earth gravity? That would be quite heavy.... I don't think I could adapt in a mere six years of working out to over a thousand pounds of BIGV. Oof.

I can hear my knees crying for mercy already.

Nuke powered. I remember when they talked about trying to make a shuttle or some other space craft and they dropped it after concerns about showering the atmosphere with radiation if it broke up on re-entry or take-off.

The planet is 2G. Five times the mass, but it's also bigger, so the surface is further from the center of mass. A fission engine in space would operate very differently from one in a submarine. You still need some sort of reaction mass to throw out the back. Cassini has a nuclear power source, but it just uses the radioactive decay to power electronics. I'm pretty sure it uses standard chemical engines for steering.

"Intergalactic diplomacy"?

Yeah, we arrest them for entering illegally, take away their medical coverage and refuse to let them go to school here and they rob us when we visit their planet.

Wasn't that a South Park episode? Goobacks.

"They took our jobs!"

http://animatedtv.about.com/library/...Goobacks_2.jpg

At last! We now have a purpose and vocation for all these bulimic bitches.

I thought it was only one and half the mass of Earth?

Maybe that was only the size...

All I know is that I heard a 150 lb person would weight 240 lbs on that planet but we may have new information on it. Stupid Goodmorning America....

Gravity is linear WRT mass, and inverse squared WRT distance. Pretending that 50% and 5 are exact numbers, the planet's gravity would be 1G * 5 / (1.5 * 1.5) = 2.222G, so a 150lb person would be 333lbs.

Those numbers are probably approximations, though, so 240 is probably right.