Imhothar Xarodit
Minmatar
Wolverine Solutions
Interstellar Alcohol Conglomerate
   |
Posted - 2008.01.06 08:57:00 -
[1]
Edited by: Imhothar Xarodit on 06/01/2008 09:04:34
 Originally by: Brevven Dej
I see you've studied your physics. In this situation, (space no air resistance), any amount of thrust (force) would produce acceleration on any size ship. The amount of acceleration is inversely proportional to the mass of the ship (a = F/m). You do not actually need to increase the thrust to continue accelerating. That only occurs when there is an opposing force that increases with speed (such as air resistance).
You aren't entirely correct here. Thanks to the theory of relativity, which has prooven rather true until now, says that a body's mass increases with velocity. This is the reason why an object under classic physics cannot reach the velocity of light (it gets a division by zero in its energy equation, aka singularity). It can get closer and closer, but never really reach it. The result of this is, that you constantly have to increase the thrust applied to an object the faster it gets. This can be observed inside particle accelerators where the mass of the particles increases the closer it reaches speed of light, thus neglecting the effects of constant acceleration energy.
So in fact he was right, at some point either your ship gets torn apart by the stress or its mass increase neglects the thruster effect.
One funny thing to imagine is the first Newtonian Law: you accelerate your ship to insane speeds. According to the law, when you shut down your engines, you continue to move at that speed in that direction. Now comes the funny part: Now try to turn! It would tear the ship in pieces, as parts of it "want" to move forward with an incredible kinetic energy, but other parts "want" to move to the side. Weeeeee!
Another thing why EVE has limited speeds would probably be the possibility of creating safe spots far out of scanner/probing range. Just get an inty and let it fly 22 hours with steady acceleration and make a safe spot. Repeat that a few days and nobody can find you ever.
|