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Emergency braking in space

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61–70 of 93 posts

Re: Emergency braking in space

#61
post #53
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was how the interstellar ship¹ in The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell worked. For the first half of the trip they accelerated at 1g, then the ship rotated and they decelerated at 1g for the second half of the trip. ⸻ 1. Which was actually a hollowed-out asteroid and used the asteroid itself as propellant to achieve continuous acceleration and deceleration for the trip. One of the better attempts at providing a pla…

It's just barely feasible with fusion energy densities. To accelerate a million tons to 0.1c you need as much kinetic energy as is theoretically contained in a million tons of hydrogen you'll fuse. Maybe with antimatter, but traveling so fast causes a ton of other issues, like every single particle you encounter is also traveling at ~0.1c.

[deleted]

Re: Emergency braking in space

#62

>The two most unscientific words in Star Trek are probably "full stop" Such a promising article, and then they completely miss the mark THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FULL STOP IN SPACE. There is no frame of refernece to stop against. It's completely meaningless, and has nothing to do with limitations of deceleration

This really all stems from a misunderstanding of what "full stop" or "all stop" (all engines, for vessels that commonly operate only some engines for cruising) means. "full stop" is a position on the engine telegraph that tells engineering to stop the engine or take it out of gear, depending on the type of propulsion setup. It has nothing to do with the speed of the ship relative to anything, after the "full stop" order is given the ship will continue to move forwards by momentum. If the captain actually wants to stop as soon as possible they will order "full astern," which signals engineering to run the engine in reverse at normal full speed, effectively braking. Because oceangoing ships stop on their own reasonably quickly this is usually more of an emergency maneuver.

The fact that motion is relative is already quite true at sea in our own world, where in at-sea operations your position relative to other vessels can matter much more than your position relative to the earth. In other words this issue is not at all new or specific to space. More basically, though, today and presumably centuries into the future "full stop" is not an order to stop the ship, it's an order to stop the engine.

The order is "full stop" because large marine engines are traditionally directly coupled to the propshaft and cannot "idle" per se. On these types of systems, still common on large vessels, there is some nuance depending on the engine setup between "standby," "stop," and "finished" which are traditionally all positions on the engine telegraph that do more or less the same thing but give different instructions to the engineer operating the engine as far as preparations for the near future. On top of this most ships today the "engine telegraph" is not really used when underway and the telegraph sender on the bridge actually controls the engine directly via automation, but usually this only allows for speed changes and not stopping or reversing, which still requires that engineering take over engine control due to the preparations and checks that must be done when stopping and starting the engine. Rather than telegraph bells this is more likely to be a phone call these days.

Re: Emergency braking in space

#63
post #56

>The two most unscientific words in Star Trek are probably "full stop" Such a promising article, and then they completely miss the mark THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FULL STOP IN SPACE. There is no frame of refernece to stop against. It's completely meaningless, and has nothing to do with limitations of deceleration

Oh, that’s silly, for a practical context, which flying a spaceship would be. Practically, it would be relative to the nearest large body/galaxy/pair, and depend on context, which would almost always be understood. For example, if you’re observing a planet, full stop would be relative to that planet.

So full stop means either go to geosynchronous orbit or fall to the surface?

Re: Emergency braking in space

#64
post #53
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was how the interstellar ship¹ in The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell worked. For the first half of the trip they accelerated at 1g, then the ship rotated and they decelerated at 1g for the second half of the trip. ⸻ 1. Which was actually a hollowed-out asteroid and used the asteroid itself as propellant to achieve continuous acceleration and deceleration for the trip. One of the better attempts at providing a pla…

It's just barely feasible with fusion energy densities. To accelerate a million tons to 0.1c you need as much kinetic energy as is theoretically contained in a million tons of hydrogen you'll fuse. Maybe with antimatter, but traveling so fast causes a ton of other issues, like every single particle you encounter is also traveling at ~0.1c.

This checks out! Kinetic energy = 0.5 mv^2, where v = 0.1c => E = 0.005mc^2 (relativistic effects not too important at this speed). Fusing a kilo of hydrogen converts ~6g to energy; at E = mc^2, that's 0.006mc^2.

So the energy needed to accelerate a given mass of hydrogen to 0.1c is almost exactly equal to the energy produced by fusing that hydrogen.

Re: Emergency braking in space

#65

>The two most unscientific words in Star Trek are probably "full stop" Such a promising article, and then they completely miss the mark THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A FULL STOP IN SPACE. There is no frame of refernece to stop against. It's completely meaningless, and has nothing to do with limitations of deceleration

[deleted]

Re: Emergency braking in space

#66

I think it would be impossible for humans to walk around at more than ~1.5 g of acceleration for extended periods of time, and even that is asking a lot. Take the g-force and multiply it by your body weight. That would be how heavy you feel when standing. If you are 70 kg (154 lbs) and under 1.5g of acceleration that is an extra 35 kg (77 lbs) of weight, which is about what we ask a modern soldier to carry. But the s…

To some extent there's a more direct comparison: a pregnant woman gains somewhere around 10--20 % bodyweight. This cannot be set down and it applies pressure to internal organs.

I can't imagine making it 50 %!

Re: Emergency braking in space

#68
post #21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this 9.8m/s2? So after 1 year at this is 3.156e7*9.8/1000*3600km/h ? Assuming it's just moving in space away from any massive objects in a straight line...1 billion km/h. Isn't it too fast?

Not to mention the power required to continuously accelerate. Or what happens to anything hitting you when you're traveling at that speed. Or needing to turn. Every answer is just a disguise for four more problems.

Sounds like all engineering! On a grander scale than usual though

Re: Emergency braking in space

#69
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1g isn't all that limiting. Under 1g acceleration you'll reach lightspeed in about a year, at which point you can't go any faster. A year to reach the top speed of the universe isn't so bad. The truly limiting factor is that we don't have engines that can produce 1g for a sustained period. We can't carry and propel enough reaction mass and reactionless drives only exist in science fiction.

> you'll reach lightspeed in about a year, at which point you can't go any faster I don't think that's how relativity works?

Yup, it would take 6 years instead. Ship time ;)

Source: https://gregsspacecalculations.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html... and ignoring all the other fun aspects.

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