[Fwd: [Fwd: starship-design: re: so you want to go faster than light . . .]]

[Steve VanDevender <stevev@efn.org>]

Curtis Manges writes:
 > > Okay, now let's look at something else for a moment. Let's just
 > > assume an analogy between the experiences of breaking the sound
 > > barrier and breaking c.

There is no valid analogy between breaking the sound barrier and breaking
the light speed barrier.  It was well known that it was possible to make
objects go faster than the speed of sound through air before aircraft
did it; the problem was recognized not as being a physical
impossibility, but a design problem in aircraft.

I miss Isaac Kuo, who used to be a subscriber to this list.  He had some
very enlightening things to say about physics, including this item from
the mailing list archives on the problems with talking about FTL frames
of reference in relativity:

http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~stevev/sd-archive/sd-1997-3/msg00594.html