Why can't our spaceships go faster-just hit the gas, man?
Wouldn't that be the way to circumvent the speed of light? More gas, more acceleration!!
Then ....ZOOM!!....on to the next galaxy!
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answers:
nineteenthly say: Subjectively, there is no limit to the velocity of an object, but to a stationary observer that velocity will be limited to the speed of light because light has a constant speed. This means that a beam of light which seems to follow a path diagonal to the direction of travel and perpendicular to it to an observer moving at that speed will take the same amount of time to travel that path to both. This in turn means that objects are compressed in the direction of movement and that time travels more slowly in order that the speed of light remain constant. Time cannot pass for an object moving at the speed of light, so actions of any kind would be impossible.
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Michael say: Even if human technology advances to the point in which spaceships can accelerate to speeds equivalent to the speed of light, us humans can't withstand the pressure within that velocity.
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vic say: The only reason craft cant go the speed of light is because the technology doesn’t exist yet
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oldprof say: Our spaceships are limited by our technology. We rely on reaction engines where mass is thrust out of nozzles producing a force F. And that force causes the ship m and its fuel M to accelerate forward, toward the pointy end of the ship.
We have A = F/(M + m) as the acceleration; so in the beginning, at the gantry, the ship barely accelerates because it's carrying more fuel M than itself weighs m.
But as M --> 0 and the fuel burns off and is thrust out the rear, the ship can accelerate faster and faster. But, darn, we soon run out of fuel. So now we have A = F/(M + m) = 0/m = 0 no more acceleration.
And that, my man, is why they can't go any faster. They quickly run out of fuel. And they do that way way below any speed where relativity is a factor. So the speed of light limit is not an issue for the time being.
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John P say: Just think of all that extra gas that spaceships would have to carry.
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Manuel say: Because life is not a cartoon.
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say: Until we can create spaceships that transform into floating Gas-stations, as well as somehow making a spaceship that can travel to Pluto, with very limited amounts of fuel, we are not going to get there. Sadly that's how it is, until we can make a much better spaceship that has much better amounts of fuel that can let us go further through our own Galaxy, we've got to wait.
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Jeffrey K say: No. Mass increases as you approach the speed of light. This means it takes more fuel to accelerate. It takes an infinite amount of fuel to reach the speed of light. That's why it is impossible.
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Ronald 7 say: You are forgetting Relativity
E=Mc^2
The Speed of light can not be broken
Not even by light
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Mark say: No. You appear not to know much about basic physics. The closer something goes to the speed of light, the more massive it gets. So you can't break the speed of light by "going faster". You'd require a sort of warp bubble, where the laws of our universe don't apply, or something like a "star gate"/"wormhole". However, space ships could be made considerably faster if we didn't rely on 1950s combustion technologies and went with ion drives. Imagine being able to go to Mars in days, rather than months.
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Fred say: It comes under a balance of speed vs. fuel expense. To reach escape velocity it takes a great amount of fuel to lift fuel to enable reaching the speed of escape orbit velocity.
So far we as a population haven't been able to send manned spacecraft greater distances than that of our moon. Future transits to Mars will take a few weeks. Outer Space is not health friendly, background space radiation is like having a torso CAT scan every second day. The human life form will die in a few years. So we instantly can't 'just hit the gas, man" and have a massive fuel expense to obtain speeds for a life form payload with a life expectancy that will not survive long enough to see the far side of Neptune anyway!
The closest galaxy is Sagittarius Dwarf, 90,000 light years away... that is a great amount of ZOOM!
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Lisa Burgit Horst say: Engineers at NASA have been working on creating better gas pedals for more than the last few decades. But its all kinds of levers and springs down there, then add in the astronauts have those big boots on. it's an engineering nightmare.
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Tom S say: They could if they had more fuel. Oh, but then you need bigger fuel tanks, which are heavier, so you need bigger engines and more fuel for that. Objects with mass can not get to the speed of light though, at least not without infinite fuel.
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Brad say: Where are you off to. I imagine at some point you would want to come back.
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cosmo say: It takes INFINITE gas to get to the speed of light.
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say: It's amazing that nobody ever figured this out before. Maybe you can become the Ruler of the Universe when you grow up.
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MysteryGuy say: Well i don't know if this is a troll or something but this is a void in science.
You see to go faster and faster you need more and more energy. ( How do you increase the velocity of a car, you give it more energy*)
But special relativity dictates that as you increase the speed, as it gets closer and closer to the speed of light... the mass of an object change, it gets bigger and bigger till you reach the speed of light and mass becomes infinite.
the equation is Mass = initial Mass / sqrt ( 1- v^2 / c^2)
so as you increase velocity the denominator gets smaller and smaller and so the Mass gets bigger and bigger. You can see when velocity reaches the speed of light the denomenator will become 1-1 which is 0 and so the mass would be infinite.
Now tell me how much energy do you need to accelerate infinite amount of mass?
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Funnelweb say: They can t exceed the speed of light (or even reach the speed of light) due to the effects described in Einstein s Special Theory of Relativity. These effects have been experimentally demonstrated, and two of these effects are of interest to this question.
1) Time Dilation: As a spaceship (or any other object) goes faster less time passes on the spaceship than outside it. The ratio of the time passed on the spaceship to the time passed outside is the square root of (1 - v^2 / c^2) (v is velocity of the spaceship, c is the speed of light).
At low speeds this doesn t make much difference, but as one approaches the speed of light the difference is greater. At the speed of light itself no time at all is passing on board the spaceship, as (1 - v^2 / c^2) = 0 when v=c. At 50% of the speed of light for every 100 days outside, 86.6 days pass inside the spaceship. At 75% of the speed of light only 66 days pass on the spaceship for 100 days outside. At 90% of the speed of light only 43.6 days have passed on the spaceship while 100 days pass outside.
From a practical point of view it means that your rocket motor is accelerating you more slowly as it goes faster, though you don t notice it. As you get really close to the speed of light time dilation increases so much that you can t ever quite reach the speed of light. But on the plus side the crew on the spaceship hasn t aged much either.
If you could go to a star 100 light years away at 99% of the speed of light the crew would experience only 14.1 years for each leg of the trip. But Earth will have aged over 200 years during their journey, so when they came back society would have changed considerably, and everyone they knew would be dead.
http://www.emc2-explained.info/Dilation-...
B) Mass Increase
The mass of a moving object increases with velocity, and becomes infinite when travelling at the speed of light. This uses the same ratio as for time dilation: the square root of (1 - v^2 / c^2). Meaning it takes ever more energy to push your spaceship forwards. Now of course any remaining rocket fuel has also increased in mass. This is more relevant to attempts to accelerate the spaceship by external force (eg light sail). The spaceship gets more massive, meaning greater inertial resistance, and it takes more energy to accelerate it.
The only reason light can travel at the speed of light is that the photon (the basic particle of light) has NO rest mass; meaning it doesn t exist unless it is moving.
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WHANKING-WILLY say: You are proof positive that the American education system (in science at least) has let you down.
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The Football God say: Where is the next gas station to refill?
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CarolOklaNola say: No, because the mass of the spaceship increases exponentially the closer to the speed of light IN A VACUUM the spa e ship goes. The fuel has mass too..
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Choose a bloody best answer. It's not hard. say: Son, it's all in the delivery.
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