Spaceship Definition and 221 Threads

Looking to see if I am in the ballpark correct about this. Let's say a spaceship flies at 99% the speed of light (B=0.99) to a planet 12 light years away. The spaceship is going to land on the planet once it arrives and stay put ever after. Ignore acceleration of start/stop. When it lands on the...

I recently revisited Bell's Spaceship Paradox, and I have a few questions about it that I may ask later, but there's one that I can ask now In Bell's Spaceship Paradox, two ships, separated by space, must begin accelerating simultaneously. After learning about simultaneity conventions and the...

Okay, since I’m tired of being stuck at even just planning the midpoint catastrophe in my sci-fi story set on a generation ship — after all the scenarios I have already considered, but which ultimately wouldn’t have made sense, as the people on this forum were kind enough to point out to me —...

Recently, I spent some time trying to get an intuitive understanding of special relativity. (I am not a physicist, only took a few physics lectures in the mid-90s) It all went well until I tried to imagine accelerating objects with non-zero length. Specifically, I tried to imagine what a...

For this problem, My solution to part (a) is ##u'_x = 0.3c##, however, I'm confused by (b) and (c). By definition in (b) and (c), the proper velocity of the proton is the speed of the proton in the proton-frame (frame where proton is at rest). So would the answer for (b) and (c) not both be...

Over fifty years ago I read a paperback that impressed me but I don't recall the title or author. Little help? The hero somehow finds himself on a spaceship with thirty other aliens, each from a different planet. They have no common language. They ignore one another. The hero rejects this...

For this problem, Does someone please know that won't the cabin, the person, and the clothing all shrink by the same proportion in the direction of travel so if you brought smaller cloths or a smaller cabin than you normally would then you may not be able to fit in? So you should not buy a...

For this problem, My working, (a) ##d = a~ly = ac~y## ##v = \frac{d}{\Delta t} = \frac{ac}{b} \frac{m}{s}## (b) Lorentz factor is ##γ = \frac{1}{1 - \frac{a^2}{b^2}}## Thus time dilation is ##\Delta t = \frac{b}{1 - \frac{a^2}{b^2}} y##, however, I think my arugment is only valid if ##a >> b##...

Whether Data in Star Trek, C3PO in Star Wars, Isaac in The Orville, or Arthur in Passengers: It seems to be a common trope that a spaceship always has “that one android character”. For Star Wars, in particular, C3PO is the only named humanoid droid in the main movies; R2-D2 and all the other...

u is the speed of the message relative to the station v is the speed of the spaceship relative to the station u’ is the speed of the message relative to the spaceship u=(-0.5c+0.7c)/(1+((-0.5c)(0.7c))/c^2 ) =0.2c/0.65=0.308c This just seems way too high, and I'm not sure if I'm doing it...

Hello there! I have a few questions that lead up to one significant problem that's been in my head for a long time. Many physics students will probably have had the same questions during their studies :biggrin: The scenario is a spaceship, that travels away from Earth at 0.999...c 🚀. Due to...

For all the attention we‘ve paid to ring habitats, we haven’t talked that much about the interior design of the central trunk yet, around which the rings rotate. Just having one big hollow ship trunk, about 100 metre in diameter, would be a lot of wasted space. It would also be too easy for...

I'm currently reading the expanse and thinking a lot about how the spaceships are built. As far as I understand, the cockpit and control room sit on top of the ship (with the ships beeing built like skyscrapers). Now since there are no windows, I feel like the cockpit doesn't need to be in the...

NASA's appropriately named "DART" space mission (for "Double Asteroid Redirection Test"), funded at some 330,000,000 worth of USA taxpayers' dollars, has been, as far as we know at these still early days, successful in its various planned goals: to navigate to the asteroid Dimorphos, then hit it...

A ship that moves at a speed very close to light, its relative mass increases and may be comparable to the mass of the planets or the sun, in this case it can change the orbit of the planets and the sun (according to the law of gravity of two bodies) Is this analysis correct?

As a result of one of our previous discussions, I had drastically cut down the distance between the six rings of my fictional generation ship Exodus to a mere 5 metres. Only recently did it occur to me that the airlocks on each ring existed primarily to allow the first crew to board the ship...

I am taking a summer course on special relativity and I stumbled across this problem and solution which I tought look neat. However, I think the solution provided for a) there is wrong. I will here present two of my solutions for a) and one solution for b) and ask if you think mine are okay? :)...

A lot of fictional examples of interstellar spaceships, be they generation ships or sleeper ships, have some sort of arboretum. However, those often just tend to be places for recreation, like a forest for joggers. Or, if the ship is transporting any animals, too, those might inhabit the...

Recently viewed video about wormholes that required negative energy to create it. Suppose hypothetical aliens have discovered this technology. Spaceship enters in first point and exit at second. To prevent spaceship destruction they might have technology to smooth gravitational waves on exit...

I was working on something where I was trying to imagine an astronaut flying into Jupiter. I convince myself that as the spaceship descends, as it slows down, whether or not the astronaut feels heavier or feels more weightless. I believe the answer is that the astronaut will feel heavier and I...

Floating inside a closed spaceship, no windows, not knowing if I'm free falling near a gravity source or far away from any gravity source, are there any experiments that can be made, to determine if there is a gravity source near and if there is such an experiment, to determine the gravity...

The experiment I am thinking about is a spaceship that approaches the horizon of a supermassive black hole by firing its engines in the opposite direction of its motion. I have the following questions: 1. When the ship is in a stable orbit, just above the horizon, how would an observer far away...

If a spaceship travels near the speed of light, could the frequency of cosmic background radiation blue-shift?

I have been reading 2010: The Year We Make Contact, a sci-fi book belonging to a classic series by Arthur Clarke. The book involves a myraid of scientific concepts so I think it is worth it to verify if the scenes would be feasible in the real word. In this thread I'd like to focus on the scene...

Ship is traveling at .4c. It is medium sized, about 1500 tons displacement. One way I want to slow down is using a parachute of sorts to use the drag from the interstellar medium. This doesn't have to be the majority of the deceleration, just a small part. A percent a year is fine. What I...

Hi, Maybe this is a foolish question but I am not able to wrap my mind around it. I imagining a spaceship approaching the Earth as shown below. The ship is planning to land at the red cross in the first picture, somewhere in Europe. I think, from this distance the pilot must feel that he is...

I started by finding the main events: Sending the first message Receipt the first message Sending the second message Receipt the second message Now, what we know is the time by ##S'## (comoving frame with the spaceship) ##T_1'## and ##T_2'## remaining to arrive to the Earth measured at...

Hi everyone. I have provided myself a problem that I insist on solving, however, I want to do it "the right way" where I can put every parameter into a calculator and get an answer quickly. I pondered doing it manually and figured that it could be done to a reasonable precision in an hour or...

Be the red point this spacecraft , the purple line the world line with slope = 2 and the green point a photon thrown towards the Earth from the spacecraft , would this spacetime diagram ok? (distance would be 1.2 billion km, and the time, 1000 times of shown, but scale is badly displayed, even...

Rocketry is not good enough for the standard scifi spaceship that can take off and land like it pleases with high payloads. Yet I still like rocketry because I like the fiery exhaust plumes. So I am considering linking the spaceship's rocket engine to a portal linked to to a planetary...

The given solution is: However, I could not agree this solution, and my solotion is: So which one is correct? it seems a exponential decay would be more convincing. Thanks!

As the problem asks for the spaceship's perspective, I know that I should take ##\vec v_S=0## and ##\vec v_M=24.1-19.3## because the motion is relative to the spaceship. Then, the relative velocity of Mars and ##SM## should have the same direction. If they have the same direction, that angle...

Let us suppose a spaceship moving from Earth to another star that is 10ly away with a speed of 0.99c. Calculate the of years spaceship takes to reach its destination (a) in the rest frame of an observer on Earth and (b) as perceived by a passenger on board the ship For (a) I find that ##t_0 =...

That's what I found. But the answer is arctan(sinθ*sqrt(1-v^2/c^2)/(cosθ+v/c))

I assume that as time is moving much slower on the ship and that may affect the frequency of heat radiation. I am not sure how to phrase the question because I do not want to assume any answers. I did ask Mr. Google but no results.

Hello everybody, I am sorry, but I need your help with my physics homework. I will be very happy if somebody could help me. 1. Homework Statement Task: The ship passed through the wormhole. The “new” temperature of cosmic microwave background is T = 0,3 K. The curvature of the universe is...

I fly in a spaceship on a 2d plane (for simplicity sake) in zero G. I eject a rock 90 degrees right to my forward vector. What does the equation look like if I want the final vector of the rock? I know the final speed of the rock is 100. What variables need to be known about the ship and rock?

Sorry if this has been done elsewhere but I haven't seen it. Case: At the start a craft with a pilot is collocated at a position with a clock A with a second clock B one light hour away synchronized with A. All are motionless relative to each other. Clock A reads noon and B reads 11am. Good...

Homework Statement We want to calculate the rate of air loss from a space vehicle (module) if a meteoroid punches a hole in it. Assume the module is sealed off from other modules. It is shaped like a cylinder roughly 4 m in diameter and 10 m long. The hole's area is a cm2. The hole is punched...

You and two identical spaceships are all at rest with respect to each other. You note that the two engines start up at the same time, and the thrust curve and acceleration profile of both spaceships are identical. As the ships pick up speed, would you measure the ships to be shorter than their...

Who is older? The one who rides at the spaceship or the one who is left on earth?

Homework Statement Mavis boards a spaceship and zips Stanley on Earth a constant speed of 0.600c at the instant mavis passes, both start timers. At the instant mavis reads 0.400 s on her timer, what does Stanley read on his? Homework EquationsThe Attempt at a Solution since time from an...

I recall reading that in the context of special relativity, one will notice differences in the acceleration of an idealized born-rigid spaceship when one compares two identical spaceships, one with the rocket motor mounted in front, the other with the rocket motor mounted in the rear. I'm...

Homework Statement What is the tension of this rope? Cosmonaut m=100kg is outside of spaceship M=5 tons on rope with length 64m. Cosmonaut along with his spaceship moves in orbit at a neglible distance. m=100kg M=5000kg L=64m Planet's mass 6*10^24 Planet's radius 6400km Homework Equations...

Homework Statement It's not a piece of homework, I'm doing a project and I've been wondering how I may be able to show it mathematically. I've covered the material before but it was a long long time ago... Homework EquationsThe Attempt at a Solution [/B] A-Thinking about modelling my "ship"...

Hi All, An observer, F, stands on Earth. A spaceship, F', is also on Earth. Their clocks are set at 0. The spaceship then leaves Earth at .5c. After 10 seconds, F sends a light signal to F'. As soon as F' receives the signal, F' sends a light signal back. When does F receive this signal from...

From Pirx´s Tale: What actually was found inside the swarm, though: But the conclusion was: No evidence whatever, in short. The Earth of Pirx´ Tale could not spot a dead ship - an asteroid-like object - at a distance of 400 million km. It was only through chance presence of a spaceship...

Homework Statement We are given that a spaceship converts mass directly to light (emitted backwards) in order to accelerate. If an energy mc^2 has been converted to light ( from the Earth's reference frame) then what is the final speed of the ship (w.r.t. Earth) if the ship's rest mass is M and...

Spaceship moves away from the Earth at a constant speed of 300 m/s. How long would it take for a clock on the Earth to differ from a clock in the spaceship by 1 second.

I've been reading several ideas postulated by some researchers using either Dark Matter and or a micro Black Hole as energy sources to power a future spacecraft . 1) using dark matter as fuel to power a spacecraft by taking dark matter into a cavity and shrinking it to critical point using...