What is the most likely speed humans will be able to travel at.?

Question

Light speed being impossible rules out....well light speed so any rough guesstimates?

Answer 1

We go like Mach 12 now.  

edit: Actually i do not think that mach 12 aircraft had a man in it..

not counting space

Answer 2

Our current fastest probe Voyager 1 is traveling at 38,400 mph. Even if in the future mankind would be able to go ten times faster than that somehow, it would not be close to the approximately 67 million mph needed to go the speed of light. The magic number that would make interstellar space travel feasible.  Ion power seems to be the technology along with solar sails the most promising propulsion systems.  Power systems that promise constant acceleration over long periods of time offer the best prospects for achieving speeds beyond the limits of chemical rockets.

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Answer 3

I would doubt we would ever practically travel at any velocity greater than 10%c.  The amount of energy needed to go faster than this goes up rapidly due to relativity so "getting there faster" wouldn't be worth the cost of fuel.   This is of course only my opinion, and even then only if we never find a way to go around the whole "can't go faster than light" thing and if fuel always has a cost.  

Answer 4

I assume you mean the maximum speed would could hope to attain. Many people still hold out hope of travelling faster than light. But the math and pyhsics of relativity is just too strange and difficult to understand for most people to even appreciate the problems involved, much less guess at an answer.

Answer 5

Theoretically, man could travel at the highest speed his technology would allow, even approaching the speed of light. The traveller himself would notice noting unusual, until he stops, and finds that his travelling time (lets say one year) has been multiplied many times for those he left behind.  His sons will have grown old and died during his one year of absence.  Time would have proceeded very much slower for him.

Answer 6

Where are you talking about? through space? light speed would not be impossible, light can do it.....but not in this lifetime.....

Answer 7

i can run at 19mph, i think i'm slightly faster than average though

i tested that by running down a road at one of those things that shows a car's speed  

Answer 8

Speed is not the problem - acceleration is. A human travelling at a constant speed will feel absolutely fine, even if it's close to the speed of light.

Acceleration, commonly measured in g, can kill a human if it exeeds 15-16g for a long time. But if a spaceship is accelerated at a bearable rate (3-4g), it can achieve speed as close to the speed of light as the fuel can allow.

Answer 9

Although you can never actually reach the speed of light, you CAN go arbitrarily close to it, provided you use enough energy. Thus it is reasonable to imagine spaceships in the future that could go above 99% of the speed of light- close enough for most purposes of travel.

Note that in addition, a spaceship moving close enough to the speed of light would perceive itself as getting from place to place faster than light, due to time dilation on board the ship. For example, you could fly from here to the Andromeda Galaxy, 2.5 million light years away, and it would necessarily take you at least 2.5 million years, but on board the ship it might appear to take only a week.

Finally, some spaceship drives have been proposed to move spaceships around from place to place at an apparent speed higher than that of light, without violating relativity. The Alcubierre drive is the most prominent of these, although solutions involving wormhols and cosmic strings have also been proposed. So far no one knows any way to actually make these drives work, so for the time being they are only theoretical.

Answer 10

The fastest any human has run is 10.352 meters per second which is about 23 miles per hour. Michael Johnson holds the world record.

The average person can run 7.33 yards per second.

Answer 11

Any speed lower than light speed.

That's because:

1. Your speed is always relative.

For instance, you always measure yourself at 0mph.

Say you're in a bus, and you see a person run towards the front. You measure their speed at running speed, but a person outside would measure their speed as the bus' speed PLUS their running speed. So speed is always relative.

2. The problem with you getting all smashed is not from the speed - it's from accelerating. If you accelerate gently, your body won't  be harmed.

If you're driving in a car, the only reason a person standing outside won't see you accelerating to light speed is that your car feels the ground's speed underneath it, and has problems with that. But a flying car in space (air is a problem too) IMHO can get to any speed lower than light, as measured by an observer.