RE: FT Taskforce and Fleet Actions

On Tue, 7 Aug 2001, Robertson, Brendan wrote:

> On Tuesday, August 07, 2001 2:10 PM, Ryan Gill
[SMTP:rmgill@mindspring.com]
> wrote:
> > Well, the overall com signals are whisker thin lasers. I'm shying 
> > away from the gravitic pulse comms stuff for now. (perhaps the Grav 
> > Drive Aliens would use it?) This isn't a big deal as it only takes 7

> > seconds for light to travel 1 AU...or something like that. So at the

> > extreme range of the edge of the system you're talking about 
> > something like 16 minutes max.
> 
> It's more like 8 1/2 light *minutes* to travel 1 AU (Indy could give
you the
> exact figure).  So comm time will be closer to 6 hours; if you can hit
your
> target with the comm laser.

8-1/2 minutes is a good number to work with for this. But if you want
the
exact figure, it's more like 8.317 minutes to the AU at light speed.

If someone wants to do the math themselves:

1 AU = 1.4959789x10**13 cm
c (speed of light) = 2.99792456x10**10 cm/s

Neptune's orbit is accepted to be ~30.07 AU out; Uranus 19.18 AU.
I'll leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out how long
light takes to travel these distances.	:-)

Where do you want the 'edge' of the solar system to be?