question:  How long will it take the Weblor II to make the round trip to the new colony and back?
context: Two years in a sardine can. The Weblor I had taken off on the first trip to Antheon five years before with a thousand families, reached the planet with less than five hundred surviving colonists. Upon the return to Earth a year later, the crew's report of suffering and chaos during the year's outgoing voyage was twisted, distorted and fragmentary. The decision of Interstellar was that the colonists started a revolution far out in space, that it was fanned by the ignorance of Captain Sessions in dealing with such matters. "We have conquered the problem of small groups in space—witness the discovery of Antheon, for example—but when there are large groups, control is more difficult." It ended with passengers engaging in open warfare with each other and the crew. The Weblor II had been built in space, as had its predecessor, the Weblor I , at a tremendous cost. Basically, it was an instrument which would open distant vistas to colonization, reducing the shoulder-to-shoulder pressure of a crowded solar system. A gigantic, hollow spike, the ship would never land anywhere, but would circle Antheon as it circled Earth, shuttling its cargo and passengers to the promised land, the new frontier. A space-borne metropolis, it would be the home for three thousand persons outward bound, only the crew on the return trip. On loan from Transworld, he will have an observer status." This would be his home for a year, just as there were homes like it for three thousand others, except that the family rooms would be larger. It was a sound he knew would be with him for two years—one year going and one year returning. The ship right now would be slipping ever so slowly away from Earth. He said it was significant that all en route had passed stability tests, and that it was to the ship's discredit that someone with criminal tendencies should have been permitted aboard. I'm a horticulturist, and Interstellar asked me to go along.
output:  24 months
options:  24 months  42 months  30 months  36 months