the other problem with a manned FTL mission is that there’s no workable solution to long-range FTL communication, so they’d have to wait a year for the radio signal from tau clepsydrae to reach iothera, but kiyohara figures even sato would know that
IOTHERA
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a year? they are that close together? i mean a light year apart is a bit… close.
-if- i remember cosmic theory right that would put them almost into a double star system. at the very least the heliopause would be grinding against each other.
also dont underestimate the stupidity of bureaucracy and bureaucrats…
A light year is approximately 6 trillion miles. I don’t think we know the exact extent of the heliopause, but Wikipedia suggests it’s probably in the ballpark of 100-200 AU. If we assume 200 AU and double that (one for each star) we get a bit shy of 40 billion miles, less than 1% of the distance between the two stars.
Which isn’t to say that they wouldn’t have any meaningful effect on each other. I don’t know enough cosmology to know the answer to that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they would.
Basically despite being tiny compared to the universe a light year is ****ing huge compared to us, or even a star.
“Space is big – really big – you just won’t believe how vastly, hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. You may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.” —Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Amen
Exploding a dog… now *there’s* a band name!
…or a web comic name…
Hmm. Tau Clepsydrae. A nod to “The Water Clock”?
from the department of replying to comments from months ago:
yes, that’s 100% intentional