Well, first, I should point out that Einstein was not the first one to say that one cannot go faster than light. That distinction actually goes to James Maxwell, who unified the electricity and magnetism. It was his laws that clashed with Newton's which led to Einstein discovering relativity.

If you go at .9999c, and outside observer would indeed see you barely lagging behind a light beam, but from your vantage point, the light beam would be rocketing ahead of you at (guess what?) the speed of light. It's the effect of time dilation.

Starship, most of your calculations here are based on Newtonian physics. Newton did say that we could go faster than light, but he was wrong. Newtonian physics work great for current, everday situations like an airplane, or Cassini, but near the speed of light, they break down. The answers they give are totally inconsistent with nature.

"Note 1" completely ignores relativity. What it represents is a ship simply accelerating up to 1.023c, which is impossible.

Also, just like you've done before, you're taking the spaceship's frame of reference. I agree 100% that, from the ship, it would take only a few years to zip around the galaxy, but real FTL travel would have flight times of a few years as measured by a person at rest. In your only relativistic calculation, the outside observer doesn't measure the ship ever going faster than light.

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