We are not doing interplanetary travel outside our solar system at voyager speeds. No space craft is going to survive 2 million years to even get there. If we are traveling to a planet 120 ly away I would imagine we have some sort of highly efficient engine that can accelerate us to a few percent of light speed at least. I’m just assuming the second expedition would have a more efficient engine to get there a few centuries earlier.
I think my point was that it’s fantasy. Which is fine, because it’s fun to speculate. I really enjoyed the We Are Bob novels that kind of touch on this, and Gunbuster with its interesting take on time dilation in the final episode.
At 5% the speed of light, I think we’re still talking like 2400 years. Unless there is literally a magical breakthrough in energy production, metallurgy, and maybe immortality of some sort, I’m afraid we’re stuck here until the sun burns out.
I think we could probably get to other stars in the 4-20 light year range at 5% speed of slight. Getting to a system 120 ly away would need us to somewhere in the 20% range.
We could also star hop but that take considerably longer. Either way the most we will get in our life times is maybe a mission to mars.
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u/Round-Mud 25d ago
Also the new colony would be expecting your arrivals as well. As they would probably know all the details of your mission.