OV9

This should probably be in the randomness thread, cos it most definitely is.

Idle musings with the sprogs last night around travel at light speed (and beyond) in sci-fi. I should clarify at this point that I do understand that the “fi” in this genre is a truncation of “fiction”...

We managed to imagine that we had a power supply capable of pushing some kind of ship to light speed – but there was then no real surprise to find that us squishy humans are the limiting factor. But how much?

Accelerating to the speed of light at 1G would take 341 days.

If folks could withstand something a bit stronger – lets say a constant 1.25G (which doesn’t sound much, but your 14stone/89kg blerk would feel 17.5stone/111kg throughout) – this comes down to 273 days.

In addition to this, lets strap them in properly 4x every day and increase the acceleration to 3G (about the force that astronauts encounter during earth launches into space) for 20 minutes each time. This reduces the time to reach light speed to 253 days.

And of course you need the same to decelerate from light speed if you wish to stop at your intended destination.

Not sure where I am going with this, but we collectively felt “oh – a bit disappoint” after this discussion, so hey – I thought I’d share.

Very interesting...

Would you like to share your workings out ???

dinny_g wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:24 am Very interesting...

Would you like to share your workings out ???

Speed of light = 288782458 ms
1G = 9.81 ms2

Accelrating at 1G to speed of light (288782458/9.81) takes 29437559 seconds = 341 days.
1.25g is 23550047 seconds = 273 days.
Compound 1.25g with 80mins per day at 3G is an average of 1.347G, which works out at 253 days.

(and 14 stones at 1.25G = 1.25*14=17.5 stones )

No I mean your Long Division...

You obviously used a calculator - I'll have to deduct 2 marks...

dinny_g wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:32 am I'll have to deduct 2 marks...

This is why most hard sci-fi puts the characters in some sort of protective stasis for ftl travel. Lesser stuff just uses the magic of artificial gravity to ignore it

The bigger thing is that the likes of ST and SW ignores relativity and how time moves differently the closer you get to light speed. If you travel at 99% of light speed for 24hrs, roughly 190 years would pass on earth.

On a very drunken night out in Turin many years ago, we discussed the possibility that if a train was travelling at the speed of light and two people were sitting facing each other and the one facing the direction of travel threw a ball to the other, woudln't the ball be travelling faster than the speed of light...

I txt'd my Boss (who had PHd's in Astrophysics AND Atomic Physics) who correctly told us that in truth the ball would never arrive to the other person...

So we had more Grappa...

I love all this shit...

This is why in Sci-Fi that tries to follow the rules of Physics they usually have some form of inertial damper and often make comments about failure of them.

I still raise a smile when ships bank to turn. Sure if looks good but just once I'd like to see a ship rotate on the spot and fire off in a straight line.

ZedLeg wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 9:41 am This is why most hard sci-fi puts the characters in some sort of protective stasis for ftl travel. Lesser stuff just uses the magic of artificial gravity to ignore it

The bigger thing is that the likes of ST and SW ignores relativity and how time moves differently the closer you get to light speed. If you travel at 99% of light speed for 24hrs, roughly 190 years would pass on earth.

Not really ST as the physics of warp are based on the creation of an artificial wormhole and tunnelling though subspace effectively bending space and time, thus closing the distance between the two points and travelling that shorter distance rather than trying to just brutally accelerate to light speed and beyond. SW doesn't take physics into account is more of an action film than Sci-fi (not that I don't love the OG 3 films) and things like the Solo statement of the Kessel Run and Parsecs just illustrates this.

Yeah, wasn't really knocking either series as I enjoy them both, just mentioning something that a lot of people don't consider.

Forever War and the Ender's Game series have great examples of how people are affected by the time displacement of ftl.

Barry wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 10:13 am I still raise a smile when ships bank to turn. Sure if looks good but just once I'd like to see a ship rotate on the spot and fire off in a straight line.

The Expanse is pretty good at spaceship physics. Apart from the alien magic blue goo of course

Children of a dead earth is a space game with decent physics too apparently.

ZedLeg wrote: Wed Oct 12, 2022 10:26 am Forever War

Good book that - my BIL gave me a copy...

Aye, I only read it a couple of years ago after a recommendation on here from Delphi (I think)

@drcarlos has basically covered everything I was going to say, it is a fascinating subject though and I enjoy reading about it.

Come on @mik, they're always banging on about inertial dampers in ST!

Couple of interesting vids from what is probably my favourite YT channel of all:





Loads on there worth watching, my favourite line of his is: It's never aliens... until it is.