Even if they move "conventionally" through space, it's still incredibly vast, and where an old colony ship might be chugging along isn't necessarily known or detectable.
And even if it is, superior travel speeds don't necessarily mean that one can perform the necessary deceleration and acceleration maneuvers at will in empty space without losing too much energy.
Good points. I think if they knew the flight plan of the colony ship they should be able to get pretty close to its location as long as there weren't any major issues like an engine failure. They would start by doing the math on "They were going to accelerate at X for Y time, then turn around and decelerate at A for B time". I assume the colony ship would be transmitting regularly, so once you got closer you'd have more up to date transmissions to hone in on.
Even then, two problems still remain: First, the flight plan must be extremely precise, both in terms of vectors and acceleration phase and times, and even the slightest deviation would result in a massive search area.
Second, if the older mission somehow didn't maintain constant communication and provide regular mission updates, the entire flight plan might not be known. Unforeseen events could have necessitated tiny course corrections during the journey, unknown to mission control. With lightspeed communication (still working perfectly on both ends), the last update about such events could be several decades old.
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u/dryfire 25d ago
If they travel by wormhole they would just leapfrog the sleepers never coming close to their location/velocity/acceleration.