Re: starship-design: Re: FTL travel

[Zenon Kulpa <zkulpa@zmit1.ippt.gov.pl>]

Sorry, but due to a severe lack of time recently, I am unable
to take more active part in this discussion - I even have troubles
with catching up with it (my "LIT-unread" archive contains
still 270 posts...). One smal remark, though:

> From owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu Mon Apr 10 02:13:34 2000
> From: Curtis Manges <clmanges@worldnet.att.net>

> 
> So you can see the problem I have with relativistic physics, 
> and the appeal  that AD (or, better) Gaasenbeek's ideas have for me. 
> To me, they explain the universe more logically. Take two examples 
> I recall from Taylor & Wheeler: one states that a ship going 
> in a straight line will take longer, at the same velocity, than one 
> going zig-zag; another states that a ship doing a round trip at constant 
> velocity will take longer going out than it will coming back. 
> I'm sorry, folks, but this just seems schizophrenic to me.
> 
Sorry, but this is no argument - our old & very natural Newtonian 
mechanics is also full of such "paradoxes", if only we step outside 
the circle of our familiar experiences - e.g., to space...
For example, when you are on a circular orbit around, say, Earth,
and want to transfer to a higher circular orbit, then despite the fact
that the orbital velocity on that higher orbit is _smaller_ than on
that you are using now, to reach the higher orbit you must actually 
_speed up_ twice (with the impulse propulsion mode).
Isn't it shizophrenic?

There are plenty of such paradoxes, also concerning rocket flight
in the atmosphere (e.g., in some circumstances, with _the same
amount of fuel_ you can reach higher altitute if you _increase
the total weight_ of the rocket...). Fond of such paradoxes was
one of the pioneers of astronautics - Ary Szternfeld (of Polish 
origin, BTW), what brought him a name of "Lord Paradox" in the
astronautics community. He described many of them in his books 
and papers, starting from his fundamental book "Introduction
to Cosmonautics" (first published in Moscow in 1937).

-- Zenon Kulpa