How long would it take to get to Ceres?

[Kirin Eldridge]

I am aware that the dwarf planet Ceres has a mean orbital radius of 2.77AU so obviously at it's closest to Earth the distance would be 1.77AU.

But obviously if Earth and Ceres are on opposite sides of the Sun then this distance would be much greater

 

Theoretically if you could build a spacecraft capable of accelerating indefinitely at say one quarter of Earth's gravity, taking the fastest possible route to the planet.

 

One further thing to consider would be that due to safety, you wouldn't be accelerating all the way across we're assuming you need to stop at Ceres, so halfway across you can begin to decelerate the ship at the same rate. With the acceleration/deceleration remaining fairly constant, what would be the maximum and minimum travel times to get to Ceres?

[fiveworlds]

1.77au is 164531778.86336 miles. The fastest manned spacecraft so far went 39,896 miles per hour. Works out as 4124.01691556 hours or 172 days approx. The fastest unmanned spacecraft went 250,000miles per hour approx which would take 658hours or 28 days approx. If we could go to mars as fast as 250,000 miles an hour we could get there in a little over a week.

Edited February 2, 2016 by fiveworlds

[Janus]

I am aware that the dwarf planet Ceres has a mean orbital radius of 2.77AU so obviously at it's closest to Earth the distance would be 1.77AU.

But obviously if Earth and Ceres are on opposite sides of the Sun then this distance would be much greater

 

Theoretically if you could build a spacecraft capable of accelerating indefinitely at say one quarter of Earth's gravity, taking the fastest possible route to the planet.

 

One further thing to consider would be that due to safety, you wouldn't be accelerating all the way across we're assuming you need to stop at Ceres, so halfway across you can begin to decelerate the ship at the same rate. With the acceleration/deceleration remaining fairly constant, what would be the maximum and minimum travel times to get to Ceres?

You can work it out with [math]t= \sqrt{2d/a}[/math]

 

This will give the time to the halfway point where d is the distance to the halfway point. Doubling this will give the full trip time.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Janus

[imatfaal]

I am aware that the dwarf planet Ceres has a mean orbital radius of 2.77AU so obviously at it's closest to Earth the distance would be 1.77AU.

But obviously if Earth and Ceres are on opposite sides of the Sun then this distance would be much greater

 

Theoretically if you could build a spacecraft capable of accelerating indefinitely at say one quarter of Earth's gravity, taking the fastest possible route to the planet.

 

One further thing to consider would be that due to safety, you wouldn't be accelerating all the way across we're assuming you need to stop at Ceres, so halfway across you can begin to decelerate the ship at the same rate. With the acceleration/deceleration remaining fairly constant, what would be the maximum and minimum travel times to get to Ceres?

 

If we stopped at 2.76 Au from the sun (ie on Ceres orbit) we would likely get a dwarf planet in the back of the head at about 18km per sec. We would need to scrub off about 11-12 km/s orbital velocity to be able to be steadily in the same orbit as Ceres

to get an accurate answer you need to use the vis-viva equation and the v - hyperbola . you work out the delta v via the visviva and then the transfer orbit. Rough envelope says around 25 days at constant tenth of a g - which is pretty close to what you would get if you used Janus' equation too ( well 25 and 35 are fairly close)