Gee Harliquin, if you want to do constant acceleration in SE, use the spaceship or airplane camera mode. Instead of scrolling for m/s, you scroll for m/s²

That's what I am doing

Skiing gets better and better in a mixed winter so far.  But next week I have to trade this
with Californian rain.

midtskogen, that is beautiful! Why are you going to California?

Wolfram only goes as far as Multiples of Light-speed, not AU/sec^2 or LY/sec^2 which seem to be some of the main velocities I need.

Okay, so it sounds like it is acceleration that you want, not velocity.  Velocity is how fast you're moving (distance per time) while acceleration is how fast your velocity is changing (distance per time squared.)  Acceleration is what you're doing by scrolling the mousewheel in the spaceship/airplane mode.

To compute the acceleration you need in order to make a trip of a certain distance in a certain amount of time, you'll need a formula.  (Where does this formula come from?  Calculus).

[tex]a=\frac{2D}{t^2}[/tex]

In words, "twice the distance divided by the square of the time".  Wolfram Alpha can do this for you very quickly.  Suppose we want to travel 1AU in 30 minutes.  In Wolfram Alpha, enter:

(2*1AU)/(30 minutes)^2 

and we get 92344 m/s^2

We can also get the answer in AU or other units. For example, say we want to go 53.53 LY in 45 mins, and we want the answer in AU/sec^2.  Then enter

(2*53.53 LY)/(45 minutes)^2 to AU/s^2

and we get 0.9288 AU/s^2

Watsisname,Awesome. Thank you very much! That should do the job nicely!

Sure thing!  Sorry for the confusion earlier; glad we got it sorted out.

Unrelated amazing tornado and storm footage:
[youtube]NZmtglWX0N4[/youtube]

midtskogen, that is beautiful! Why are you going to California?

Meeting at Google.  Third time in a year and a little.  The irony: I'm working with videoconferencing. (And in the same period that work has also taken me to meetings in Japan, Argentina, Europe, Korea and the US again next month).

Unrelated amazing tornado and storm footage:

Those clouds move so incredibly fast its surreal.
Another really cool video
[youtube]izBoIs7jww0[/youtube]

I remember watching a funnel cloud that went over our front yard back around 1996. I remember all the sirens, no cars anywhere, and I decided to go against my parent's advice and look out a window. Moving fairly fast over the yard I saw this spinning cloud coming down slowly, it passed over our house luckily, and it reached the next block over and touched down. Pretty intense to see a home go from a house to nothing more than splinters.

Sure thing!  Sorry for the confusion earlier; glad we got it sorted out.

Unrelated amazing tornado and storm footage:
[youtube]NZmtglWX0N4[/youtube]

Nope, sorry, that didn't work
I inputted the data into Space Engine,  the format suggested (2*5.01au)/(30 minutes)^2 to km/s^2), centered the target, hit "W", sat back and it certainly was not traveling fast enough to reach the target location in 30 mins (real time)!
To fully understand what I am trying to do, try this:
Load Space Engine
Go to Earth
Select and center Jupiter

Fly there in 30 minutes!

I finally found a video of what it looks like when the ISS accelerates
[youtube]8MR3daaWLXI[/youtube]

[youtube]g_wPUYbGRHs[/youtube]

Nope, sorry, that didn't work

Aye, I see the problem.  The math is right; the problem is that in spacecraft/airplane mode, your velocity depends on frame rate.  The faster the frame rate, the faster your velocity.  So I don't think there's a way to work around this.

Watsisname ,I'm not sure that's the problem. The problem seems to be that I'm having to deal with acceleration and not speed. Sheesh, who ever would have thought that something as simple as going from A to B in a set amount of time in Space Engine would be so complicated! (lol) (and thus putting a bit of a kybosh on what I'm doing!)
This is an example of what it is I'm trying to do, but with allotted time between destinations[youtube]f5kQXc9jC5Y[/youtube]

Gee Harliquin, believe me, acceleration is not the problem.  Determining the time it takes to complete a trip under constant acceleration is very simple.  The problem is that in spaceship mode your speed depends on your framerate.  If you have a faster framerate, you'll make the same journey in less time than if you had a slower framerate.

To see why this is true, go into spaceship mode and fly through a starfield at say, 20LY/s.  Then watch what happens to your speed as you increase the limiting magnitude of stars a lot (by pressing ] repeatedly).  This will render more stars, decreasing the framerate, and your speed will decrease.

The math is right; the problem is that in spacecraft/airplane mode, your velocity depends on frame rate.  The faster the frame rate, the faster your velocity.  So I don't think there's a way to work around this.

I never checked but I wonder if that is the case for when controlling a spacecraft as well. I noticed as I cranked up magnitude settings the timer on arrival time would stay the same but count down wrong and be a bit slower, 2 minutes would take 3 minutes and so on.

If you have a faster framerate, you'll make the same journey in less time than if you had a slower framerate.

I will experiment with that a bit and see what kind of difference it makes in which modes, thats pretty strange.