Can compressed air propel an object in outer space?

Answer 1

I think it could and in outer space you would keep going faster and faster you could even beat the speed of light after a few years.Just hook up solar panels to air conpressers and run it out the rockets and need no fuel.We should biuld a space craft and travel to the nerest earth like planet,we could me on new planet in 20 years or so.

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Answer #2:

Answer #1, above, describes a brilliant, innovative, groundbreaking plan for

interplanetary travel. However:

-- You could not beat the speed of light, after any length of time. There's

a lot more to it than to just keep on pushing for a long time.

-- Solar panels could certainly run the air compressors, but you still need

something to compress, and there's no air in space. So if you want to use

compressed air, you need to bring all the air along with you. (And since you

want to keep it in tanks that are as small as possible, it'll already be highly

compressed before you leave, so you won't need the air compressors, and

you can just leave them behind.)

-- Solar panels don't work worth beans when you get farther away from the sun.

-- Even if the nearest star has an Earth-like planet, if you want to be there

in "20 years or so", you'd have to average 21% of the speed of light for the

whole trip. Just to reach that speed, you'd have to keep blasting 24/7 with

your rockets or your air compressors or whatever, for almost 40 days !

You could accelerate faster than that, but you'd have to exceed 2 G's, which

over any extended period of time would most likely wipe out the passengers.

And that's just to reach the nearest star.