Here's an interesting bit: the Island Clusters were supposedly settled by generation ship from Sol, per TCS. Island Clusters is on the Traveller map, about 175 parsecs from Sol. Means the generation ships averaged 0.2C on that trip.
Many unanswered questions there: whether they hopped from system to system refueling en route, had some sort of Bussard device for gathering fuel from space, or carried massive amounts of their own fuel for the trip. Also unanswered is what their acceleration was and whether their top speed reflected a very, very slow drive or some need to limit speed while traversing space; my guess is the latter. (Even stray atoms be quite powerful when encountered at those speeds.) Carrying your own fuel means something on the order of 25,000 dTons of fuel for every EP generated, which in turn hints at accelerations no better than hundredths or thousandths of a G, but even with those weak accelerations it would take less than a century to hit 0.2C.
Prometheus was also settled by generation ship, supposedly launched around 2050, and a jump ship was there saying hi to them in 2101, so the 4.367 LY trip was less than 60 years. I understand much of this comes from GURPS, and I don't have the relevant supplements - relying on what's in the Wiki - so I can't make specific calculations, but it looks like it's roughly in the same ballpark.
Many unanswered questions there: whether they hopped from system to system refueling en route, had some sort of Bussard device for gathering fuel from space, or carried massive amounts of their own fuel for the trip. Also unanswered is what their acceleration was and whether their top speed reflected a very, very slow drive or some need to limit speed while traversing space; my guess is the latter. (Even stray atoms be quite powerful when encountered at those speeds.) Carrying your own fuel means something on the order of 25,000 dTons of fuel for every EP generated, which in turn hints at accelerations no better than hundredths or thousandths of a G, but even with those weak accelerations it would take less than a century to hit 0.2C.
Prometheus was also settled by generation ship, supposedly launched around 2050, and a jump ship was there saying hi to them in 2101, so the 4.367 LY trip was less than 60 years. I understand much of this comes from GURPS, and I don't have the relevant supplements - relying on what's in the Wiki - so I can't make specific calculations, but it looks like it's roughly in the same ballpark.
