Phantomexe87 wrote:I'm not much of a technical person, but the Apollo did it in 3 days on 1960s tech, Destiny is set at least in the 22nd century, wouldn't the time be considerably less? Like how in the 18th century it took 1-2 months to cross the Atlantic Ocean, and in the 20th century, 1-2 weeks.
Depends on how they're going about it. The Apollo moon missions (and modern space shuttle launches) were performed using chemical rocket engines, which have very strict physical limits to their performance and fuel efficiency. The Universal Century series mainly use nuclear thermal rocket engines, which in theory have several times the fuel efficiency and should make it possible to follow faster (and thus more wasteful) routes around the Earth sphere.
But unless you're in real hurry, the classic 1960s flight plan is still going to be a lot more efficient. Unlike travel across the Earth's surface, which is pretty straightforward, space travel involves a lot of fiddling with orbits and matching velocities. If you launch from Earth at a million miles per hour, you're going to shoot right out of orbit and into the depths of space, so you'll need to expend just as much energy to slow down again and then establish the same speed and direction as the object you're heading for. The high-tech future engines used in Gundam may make this
possible, but it's still the sort of thing you'd save for an emergency.
The classic example here is in Gundam 0083, where the Federation pursuit fleet covers the distance from Solomon to the moon in about 16 hours while pursuing the runaway colony, only to use up all its propellant and end up stuck in lunar orbit. Under normal circumstances, they'd spend two or three days on the trip and have plenty of propellant left over.
-- Mark
