Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Not quite true. You'd spend half of the travel time under 1g accelerating, then the ship does a 180 degree flip in 0g, and then you spend another half of the travel time under 1g decelerating.

Edit: Of course, at constant 1g acceleration, at day number 354 we reach 1c. Don't know if we should start coasting before we reach 1c or just the hell with it and see what happens if we keep accelerating.



So many people in this thread are acting like constant acceleration is possible. Unfortunately the faster you get, the more energy it takes to maintain constant acceleration.

> Don't know if we should start coasting before we reach 1c...

Don't worry about it. Your rocket would need to expend an infinite amount of energy to accelerate to c. The energy stored in your finite-sized rocket is finite. At a certain point it becomes futile to keep trying to accelerate -- though I suspect that the impacts of space dust will eventually cause a significant amount of drag

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/SR/Rocket/r...


"Unfortunately the faster you get, the more energy it takes to maintain constant acceleration."

I'm not sure what you mean by this. You could also say "the slower you get, the more energy it takes to maintain constant acceleration". Constant means ongoing, so as long as it is constant, you are going to have to expend more energy.

Unless you mean that somehow, you could determine your absolute speed by how much you accelerate for a given expenditure of energy, but wouldn't that violate relativity?




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: