Re: starship-design: Re: FTL travel

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

STAR1SHIP@aol.com writes:
 > Einstein invented the atomic bomb and that fact blows your nonsense theories 
 > you were taught out of the water.

The atomic bomb was invented by a group of physicists and engineers
working for the Manhattan Project.  That group didn't include Einstein.
Einstein showed that you could release enormous quantities of energy
from matter, but was not directly involved in creating the atomic bomb.

 > http://www4.district125.k12.il.us/faculty/bsparaci/sr/Einstein.html

That wasn't written by Einstein himself; it's a somewhat inaccurate
summary of Einstein's work written by some students.  See the URL
http://www4.district125.k12.il.us/faculty/bsparaci/sr/ for the context.

 > The increased relativistic 1/2 ton mass 
 > approaches infinity as the velocity approaches light speed.
 > This real difference in the masses and resulting energy is the factor you 
 > underestimate the velocity obtainable by my machine.

But if the fuel gets heavier as the ship goes faster, so would the ship,
and therefore that increasing amount of energy you think you'd get would
have to be applied to an equally magnified payload mass.  The effects
cancel out.

The term "relativistic mass increase" is actually a physical misnomer
that resulted from a misunderstanding of Einstein's writings.  Timothy
van der Linden gave us a citation of a very nice article explaining the
history of the term "relativistic mass" and why it's often currently
discouraged; see

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~stevev/sd-archive/sd-1999-1/msg00129.html

You can get a seemingly large amount of energy from 1/2 ton of
radioactive material.  But you can't get more than 1/2 ton * c^2 joules
from it, and much less than that if all you do is let is undergo normal
fission.  You need much more than that amount of energy to accelerate a
multi-ton ship to a high fraction of c, whether you do your calculations
with Newtonian or relativistic equations.

 > It is time for you to put up or shut up and listen.
 > Show me other wise.
 > 
 > Respectfully.
 > Tom Jackson

Honestly, I'm not seeing you showing anyone here much respect.  If
anyone questions the contradictions or logical errors you make, you just
start making more grandiose and flawed statements and citations, or
referring to erroneous citations.  I'm listening, but you're not going
to convince anyone with internally inconsistent bluster.

If you're convinced that we're sticks-in-the-mud brainwashed by the
scientific establishment, then I recommend that you unsubscribe from
this mailing list.  Let me remind you again of the statement you should
have seen when you signed up for the list:

   Although clearly there is much speculation involved in the
   development of future technology, this mailing list is
   practically oriented and proposals should be justifiable using
   presently-known engineering techniques and scientific knowledge.
   Proposals involving highly speculative topics such as FTL
   (faster-than-light) propulsion or novel energy generation
   techniques will be treated quite skeptically by list members.