From: Brent Allsop (allsop@swttools.fc.hp.com)
Date: Fri Jul 03 1998 - 10:50:55 MDT
Michael Lorrey <retroman@together.net>,
Very fascinating. Thank you for this great information.
> Since this velocity is higher than light speed, you cannot obviously
> reach this velocity. Instead, as you get closer to light speed, two
> things begin to happen. A) your vehicle becomes steadily heavier
Heavier? As in more mass right? I have a question about this.
Lets say you and an identical companion ship have accelerated to 90%
the speed of light going away from earth at the constant 1 g
acceleration (relative to the people on the ships) for however long
that took. At this point both ships have stopped accelerating and are
now coasting at a constant 90% the spped of light relative to the
earth. Now, each ship relative to the other is stationary right? As
in 0 MPH? Now, how much energy is required to accelerate one ship to
90% the speed of light going away from the other coasting ship in the
direction away from earth? Isn't it the same as is required for
either of the ships to get to 90% the speed of light relative to
earth? And will you not continue experiencing the same 1 g
acceleration as you accelerate away from the other, still coasting
twin ship?
I guess my real question is, according to the people on the
ship, does it appear to take more and more energy to maintain a
constant 1 g acceleration experience or is this only true in the
space/time frame of the people on earth? So, according to the people
on the ship, you can accelerate at 1 g forever right? It's just that
the earth starts accelerating away from the ship at an ever decreasing
rate and the total speed never approaches greater than the speed of
light right? The coasting ship ends up receding from the still
accelerating ship at 90% the speed of light but the earth is now only
receding at 99% the speed of light or something like that?
If you continued to accelerate away from the earth at 13 feet
per second per second, relative to the earth, wouldn't you, on the
ship, start experiencing greater than 1 g acceleration as you
approached the speed of light relative to earth? Being eventually
crushed by this gravity like effect due to the ever encreasing energy
or force being applied by the engines long before ever actually
reaching that speed?
Mark <mark@unicorn.com> also replied:
> And a table showing how much energy you'd need to sustain that
> acceleration... without an extremely exotic power source you won't
> do it for long.
It requires greater then an infinite power source to
accelerate to greater than the speed of light away from earth doesn't
it? That is QUITE exotic! Is that what "warp drives" are? And if
you do achieve this, doesn't the earth appear to the people on the
ship to start going backwards in time? As in effects start causing
the causes?...
Is it possible to achieve this kind of acceleration, given
very exotic engines able to deliver greater than infinite force, in an
orbital fashion so that you aren't really going away from the earth,
but just going around it? Like superman did to save Lois Lane? What
do rotational or centrifugal forces behave like as you approach
orbital speeds of light? As large stars collapse into a black whole,
don't they start rotating, like a whirlpool, at near such speeds? If
you were orbiting, at near the speed of light, just above the event
horizon, wouldn't you feel weightless? Would beings with warp drives,
accelerating to greater the rotational speed of light as they dropped
below the event horizon, be able to eventually watch the creation of
the rest of the universe around the black whole in their
weightlessness?...
I better stop, I think I'm getting a head ache. But it sure is
fun!
Brent Allsop
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