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Let's say (hypothetically) that you had a very, very fast spaceship. As in, it can accelerate to 0.5c in a minute. (Presumably, this would require some rather hardy Kerbals, but that's besides the point). It runs on Mysterium fuel, which never depletes (it's a mystery why!) If this spaceship wants to transfer from Kerbin to Duna in the least amount of time possible*, what should the maneuver be? My intuition is that it could burn towards the target the whole time. But perhaps it is a prograde burn, and then a lot of radial burns? What is the fastest flightplan? * Ignoring timed dilation. The point is not the 0.5c speed per se, but rather that the ship is very fast.

I have noticed lately that this group has sort of given way to alot of brain flatulance, so I thinks it time that I contributed. The universe appears to be derived from a indescribable quantum singularity, at its origin is infinite energy density in spatial dimensions that are beyond definition. At the moment that this state begins to not be singular the overiding force in the universe is quantum gravity. While it is essentially impossible to see quantum gravity now, at that point in time particles (all non-massive) interacted with through massive waves that literally blew everything to itsy bitsy tiny non-massive pieces. Quantum gravity has been described as an entangled particle that interact via quantum interactions, the way I imagine this now is that the entangled particles interact randomly and so we are not able to control them; two far off particles interact creating an imaginary force between them. So lets say that in 100 years from now we discovered the graviton and how to manipulate it. We can create 2 particles split them and force all the gravitational attractions, essentially accelerating the particles at the speed of light toward each other where they annihilate into perfect energy. So we build a ship, two ships actually, and in the two ships are two plates, one fore each ship. To do this we attenuate quantum gravity so that it behaves 'normally' (the mechanism for doing this resides in some new fundemental boson we discover in 20 years). Each ship then has a solar array, a cannae drive with overly optimistic power conversions efficiency (1N/KW) and it is using the particles in space to accelerate. On the back of the array is an electromagnet that attaches to an interstellar probe, possibly manned. This new breed of minature humans can survive long term acceleration at 3g. So we place these two ships in a opposed positions in orbit around the sun. at 4.5E10 meters 3g = 30 m/sec^2 30 = omega^2*r = velocity^2/r if 30 = v^2/4.5E10 1.35E12 = v2 V^2 = 10E6 or a million meters per second. As the ships accelerate they generate centripetal force which causes ships to want to increase the semimajor axis of the orbit; however to counter then the engineers begin manipulating the quantum gravity between the two plates. The force is transmitted 'through' the sun with no perturbation, these are entangled interactions. Once the maximum tolerable force is generated the distance between the plates is allowed to expand, so the ship moves beyond earths orbit and increases speed to 2E106 and just beyond mars to achieve 0.01c. Using a system of solar lenses placed through out the solar system on ships using the same device the suns output is focused on the accelerating ship. It then moves out to a distance beyond pluto (200AU) where it is moving at 0.1c. At a point where the two ships have relativistic inertia in the direction of two opposed system the electromagnet releases the two ships and the head off to their two target worlds (assuming they have a massive stellar wind parachute that the deploy at some point to stop them). Once deployed the platform decelerates and recoils back to its initial orbit inside of mercury awaiting its next delivery. This is an evolution of an old idea in which ships are chained together in an orbital circle, the problem with this idea is that the mass of the chains eventually results in an explosion of the centripetal restraining ring. The idea assumes we can create structures of solar panels that are on the order of a gram per kilowatt and that can resist inertial forces several magnitudes better than structural materials now available. There is a variant of this idea that uses captured solar gases to accelerate to relativistic velocities, but it takes 1000 time as long.