/sci/ - Science & Math

>2500W 750mn

Ballpark figures.

Take the New Horizons' RTG. Weight 57Kg, 300W of power. We'll take 9 of them for 513kG and 2700W.

Take the weight of the New Horizon probe (478 kG) subtract, fuel, RTG, add in our RTG, brings us up to 856Kg. ( I don't know how much the EmDrive weighs mind you)

Assume Linear relationship between thrust and power, 0.3mn/W, or 810W initial thrust. Radioactive decay reduces our power source by about 5% per 4 years (1.25% per annum) (according to wikipedia anyway).

Although the concept of delta V doesn't apply per se, because we have no fuel mass, in practice as our reactor decays, our thrust decreases. A bit of dicking around in MATLAB shows that our velocity starts to level off after about the 200th year of acceleration, and is essentially static after the 400 year mark, giving us a pseudo-delta V of about: 2.3253e+06 m/s or.... 0.78% c.

Assuming a hyper-efficient spacecraft where everything that isn't RTG is weightless pushes that up to 1.3%c.

Using that, the ship ~420 years to Alpha Centauri, having reached the magical 1%c figure during the 118th year of acceleration.

It would have 3.8704e+15 J of kinetic energy, or just a hair less than a megaton of TNT.

Pretty disappointing tbh, I was expecting to at least leave the surely bonds of Newtonian mechanics and dust off the relativistic equations, but it didn't even get that far.

I know this is almost certainly bullshit but screw you I'm having fun.