Will man be able to travel near the speed of light 99c in the fore seeable future?

Answer 1

The short answer is 'no'. We all know that. But when I saw this question, I decided to spend
a few minutes playing with it.

Let's ignore relativity . . . just assume that my mass remains constant as I move faster and faster.

My mass is about 85 kilograms. Let's see how much energy it would take to rev me up to 0.99c.

Kinetic energy of any moving object is [ 1/2 m v2 ].

The speed of light is 300 million meters per second, so 99% of it is 297 million meters per second.

The energy required to goose me up to 0.99c is the Kinetic Energy I would have once I got there.

KE = 0.5 m v2 = (0.5) (85) (297,000,000)2 = (42.5) (8.82 x 1016) = 3.744 x 1018 joules.

Now to convert the joules into a more familiar unit of energy: 1055 joules = 1 BTU.

My KE at 0.99c = 3.55 x 1015 BTU.

According to my 2009 TIME Almanac, the entire USA used 8,149 trillion BTU of electric power in 2005
generated by nuclear power plants.

So in order to bump me up to 0.99c, you'd need (3.55 x 1015) / (8,149 x 1012) = about 44% of the total
energy output of all the nuclear power plants in the US in 2005.

And then an EQUAL amount of energy to slow me down again when I get where I'm going.
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Another problem . . .

Right now, I'm hardly moving, and you want to rev me up to 99% of 'c'.

That's what I call "acceleration". How soon do you want me to reach that speed, and how much acceleration
do you expect my old bones to survive ?

Let's say I can survive 10 G's for a while without turning to jello. How long would I have to endure 10 G's
in order to reach 0.99c ?

(300,000,000 meters per sec) x (0.99) divided by 98 m/sec2 (that's 10G) = 3.029 million seconds

= 35 days !

If you could come up with the power to push me with a constant force of 1,870 pounds (10 times my weight),
thus accelerating me at 10 times the acceleration of gravity, and I could maintain my focus and endure it, we'd have to
continue it steadily for 35 days in order to push me to 0.99c.

And in order to do it in only 35 days, you'd need about 4.6 times the total power output of
all the nuclear plants in the US during that time.

Answer 2

Currently, traveling at 99% of the speed of light is not achievable with our current technology nor foreseeable in the near future due to the immense energy requirements and technical challenges involved. It would require breakthroughs in propulsion systems and fundamental physics understanding.