Jackson123
The meaning of life is the fine game of nil
Sigrun
Essex's Navigator
Essex's Navigator
As Essex was accelerating, Sigrun kept an eye on datas showed on the HUD displayed on the bridge window. Planetary orbital parameters, mass parameters, speed parameters, orbital eccentricity in the system are all shown in a visual ways. The spaceship is maneuvering according to the route the flight computer had calculated, to consume the minimum amount of fuel while gaining maximum amount of acceleration. The thrusters for sub-lightspeed travel are extremely powerful, while Essex was orbiting around Kepler-62f, she was travelling at a speed of 25km/s, after Essex performed the slingshot she gained the initial speed to escape Kepler 62 (the star)'s gravity, at 432km/s. After engaging autopilot, in the next 30 minutes the ship gradually approach the speed of 20% lightspeed, around 60000km/s. At this speed collision with a single dust would cause an explosion comparable to tactical nuclear weapons, that's why switching on deflector shield is in the after take off checklist before turning off your landing lights.
It's an acceleration of around 3396G. If it wasn't for the Inertia Negation System installed on all starships, everyone will be crushed by a force 3396 times their own weight--aka being thrown to the bulkhead at the back and became a pile of bolognese.
At this speed the Relativistic Doppler effect became visible, caused by the change in frequency and wavelength of light caused by the relative motion of the source and the observer. Outside the bridge window, Sigrun could see the mild blueshift of all the stars in front of her, caused by movement of the observer towards the source and vice versa, and the stars astern of the ship had redshift, including Kepler-62e the other habitable planet in the system, as they are leaving.
This scene often time reminds Sigrun of an ancient song from the now distant Earth...the stars look very different today.
It would take some times before Essex could engage her warp drive to exceed lightspeed, since warp technology involves spacecraft traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, and spacetime can also be warped and curved by astronomical object, most obviously being the black hole, it's strongly discouraged to use warp drive too close to gravitational source like stars, to avoid spacetime disaster. Kepler 62 is still relatively close to them.
So...for now, there's nothing left to do.
(I keep worrying about messing up something major in writing these science fantasy stuff, so feel free to point it out.)
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