A new upper bound on interstellar ark speed
Abstract
Interstellar trip safety comes at truly astronomical cost. We show the power required to detect inbound fatal pebbles at velocity v scales as v^16/3. For any ship of reasonable size this extends well into the petawatt range even before reaching relativistic speeds. This suggests the actual speed limit for non-expendable craft is around 0.003c. About 2 million mph.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life
Rocket and propulsion systems research
Spacecraft Design and Technology
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research)
- Publication date
- 10 March 2026
- Language
- EN
- Document type
- Preprint