03-07-2021, 09:14 AM
Doing some simple math:
Lets assume an average seperation between objects more than 1 km across to be 10 AU in the oort cloud and interstellar space, less than the 30 AU suggested previously. This lets us estimate the density of oort cloud/interstellar objects to be 1 per 1000 cubic AU, or one object per 3.35E+27 cubic km.
Let's also assume the front facing cross section of our ship is 100 square km, or 10 km on a side. This is definitely on the larger side, but will illustrate the point.
The distance to Proxima Centauri is 4.24 LY, or 4.01E+13 km. This means during its journey, our craft will traverse through a volume equal to 4.01E+15 cubic km.
Using this, we can find that the expected number of large objects you'd run into is 1.2E-12, or that only roughly one in every trillion ships will run into something of this size.
Lets assume an average seperation between objects more than 1 km across to be 10 AU in the oort cloud and interstellar space, less than the 30 AU suggested previously. This lets us estimate the density of oort cloud/interstellar objects to be 1 per 1000 cubic AU, or one object per 3.35E+27 cubic km.
Let's also assume the front facing cross section of our ship is 100 square km, or 10 km on a side. This is definitely on the larger side, but will illustrate the point.
The distance to Proxima Centauri is 4.24 LY, or 4.01E+13 km. This means during its journey, our craft will traverse through a volume equal to 4.01E+15 cubic km.
Using this, we can find that the expected number of large objects you'd run into is 1.2E-12, or that only roughly one in every trillion ships will run into something of this size.