Submitted by JerryWasARaceCarDrvr t3_zneoux in space
[deleted] t1_j0girgo wrote
25 years of travel in space is absolutely nothing. If you can see a planet before traveling, I would almost guarantee you that we could calculate where it will be in 25 years with a very, very small margin of error. We can see where it came from, and because objects in space pretty much never change trajectory unless acted upon, we would know exactly where it's going to be in 25 years UNLESS it had a change in trajectory. That being said, things in space don't move that quickly, so we would likely be able to see any bodies or objects that could interact with our destination in such a way as to change trajectory.
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Regardless, I would be willing to bet, that if we picked a random planet in the sky, we could predict where it will be 25 (earth) years in the future with almost 100% accuracy.
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Think of it this way. How many times in the history of our specific solar system has ANYTHING changed course? not a once. This is also something that we pretty much never observe in space as well. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think we've ever witnessed a planetary body change course. We've seen things like black holes or stars going supernova, which undoubtedly would affect the planets around them, but these would all be super predictable if we are actively looking for it at our destination. Likewise, even if a planetary body did change course slightly, chances are it wouldn't break orbit from its star. That means that even if we miscalculate, we'd still end up very close to where it is.
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I don't think this is all that much of a problem. I think that if we are able to get an object moving at 1000x FTL, this will be a non-issue. Mind you! I am also making the assumption that with 1000x FTL, we'll also have technology that allows us to SEE FTL as well. IE, we'll be able to look at a planet 25k light years away and see it at its present state, not what it looked like 25k years ago. Even so, 25k years is not that much in space terms and likely wouldn't change anything.
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