No. Relativity and time dilation is key here. It sums up to about 40 years SHIP TIME, but that is still billions of years earth time.
In younger years at university we did such science-fiction fantasizing, too.
Can be a funny evening, especially when beer and weed is involved.
But it all does not stands remotely when it comes to face real physical facts.
Engineers as computer scientists know more about physics than most common people - most of us had to make some credits in physics, when studied at universitys; at least we 'nerds' are more interested in physics.
But we didn't really studied physics.
So all this almost plausible sounding scifi-fantasys are consisting of three kinds of things:
- real physics, which makes the skeleton of the idea, and are used for prove
- not-yet-proven-it's-completely-impossible-but-may-be-theoretically-possible-sometimes-in-the-future pseudo physics
- left out parts, not looking at all pieces togehter for a complete picture
Example with your mentioned case - not wanting to piss you off (nobody wants to piss off an admin btw), but being pretty sure about you're are open to reasonable talk; and without calculating anything for real (don't want to);
but calculating real values within real equations always prove, it's impossible.
So:
To get ship's time to 40 years, while the rest faces billions, you need to get to app. 99% lightspeed (or something), which already is only hypterthetical possible.
For to get there you need:
An engine, that is not invented yet, and highly doubtful it ever will (Something that produces some kind of continous nuclear explosion by fission as propulsion... - please fire it up first, when you are at least around Jupiter {where your first ten years traveltime are gone for just to get there.})
Way more you'll need large -
gigantic - amounts of fuel.
Many miss that fuel is the very most mass you need to accelerate.
The more fuel you need, the more fuel you need to get it moved - it's exponential.
Don't be astonished when you come to such numbers like "way more fuel as our whole solar system contains of mass..."
You may have also missed the fact you need three phases of flying, besides the travel at almost lightspeed, you need to accelerate to get there, and also you need to brake down, or you'll see you target for a extremely small moment only (if even at app. lightspeed) before raced by - to whatever comes beyond, missing it, which means the whole point of this adventure would be missed.
I didn't looked up the correct value, but astronauts are being exposured to something about 4G for several minutes; I am no physician but I highly doubt a human body could survive exposed to that kind of acceleration for very much longer. (It's a simple calculation: How long do need to accelerate with 4G until you reach lightspeed. Don't be astonished if it takes a while.)
Accelerating even more makes your space traveller reaches its target as a very flat mummy.
At this point often the total fantasy starts:"yeah, well, when we have gravitational compensation..."
One can only calculate with what is given for real.
Anything else is pure fantasy.
End of story.
Others may ask:
"Does this all will have some useful point, anyhow?!"
Yes.
Here it comes:
This all "travelling to the stars" is kind of human longing for there must be better place.
It's very old.
It's very human.
It's "just simply leave all our problems behind" - instead of solving them.
It's avoiding.
This is absolutely okay, as long as two things are understood:
1. It's fantasy. It will never happen.
Good stuff for books, movies, TV, computer-games (I
love such games), nice rubbish-talk with friends,
but of no real practical use whatsoever.
2. It will not solve any problem.
In contrary, every engineers knows: unsolved problems will cause more.
And that's exactly why I made the effort to post this long story,
'cause I know there also some who contradict.
The point is, you cannot run from problems caused by issues you're carrying inside yourself.
You will take them with you anywhere you go.
(Some may think:"Hey, that's similar like 'FreeBSD must become more Linux.'" - You see, I'm still in topic, even if a
bit farther *cough* ?)
Unless you solve them.
But if you solved them, you may also stay, no need to go anywhere else anymore.
It's kind like a messy (someone having an disorder not to discriminate useful things from useless junk, so get rid of nothing, and drowning everything including himself in his own garbage) dreaming of, his problem would be solved if he just moves into a new, larger house, where everything is empty, and clean.
Of course this cannot work.
He will bring all the garbage into the new house - continue his madness.
Or he leaves it in his old home. For that he need to be capable of getting rid of the useless junk.
But if so he doesn't need to move into a new house. He simply needs to get rid of the useless junk.
Dreaming of setting of to another "paradise planet" is quite similar.
If we don't solve our problems here - greedy exploitation of resources, including humans - travel to another planet will not solve that. We would bring our unsolved issues with us, and destroy that planet the same as we did with ours. (Or you may dream of some hypterthetical personal paradise; for that you don't need no space travel, you only need to get some land, and found the perfect nation - wouldn't be the first one; also not the first who failed.)
So before it makes any sense to travel somewhere else, we must first solve our problems here.
And when we did, we also can stay here.
en.wikipedia.org
admiralcloudberg.medium.com
