MDMs should last a little longer than they do

Relativity can give you a headache. I suspect that is why the Honorverse physics seem to have a simplified version. Remarkable how it has endured the last 20 years so well.
A minor bone to chew on. Take a hollow core SD(P), travelling at 0.6 C. One crew member at the tail shines a laser torch up the core from tail to front. What speed is the light traveling at?
I believe that I know the answer, but would appreciate responses.

Daryl wrote:Relativity can give you a headache. I suspect that is why the Honorverse physics seem to have a simplified version. Remarkable how it has endured the last 20 years so well.
A minor bone to chew on. Take a hollow core SD(P), travelling at 0.6 C. One crew member at the tail shines a laser torch up the core from tail to front. What speed is the light traveling at?
I believe that I know the answer, but would appreciate responses.

The speed of light is constant.

Daryl wrote:Relativity can give you a headache. I suspect that is why the Honorverse physics seem to have a simplified version. Remarkable how it has endured the last 20 years so well.
A minor bone to chew on. Take a hollow core SD(P), travelling at 0.6 C. One crew member at the tail shines a laser torch up the core from tail to front. What speed is the light traveling at?
I believe that I know the answer, but would appreciate responses.

Speed of light wouldn't change but the light would be noticeably redshifted.

That would have to take some getting used to. On a ship under way the color of the bulkheads would change depending on which direction you were facing!

Guess that would help teach the recruits how to tell port and starboard apart pretty quickly.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

Daryl wrote:Relativity can give you a headache. I suspect that is why the Honorverse physics seem to have a simplified version. Remarkable how it has endured the last 20 years so well.
A minor bone to chew on. Take a hollow core SD(P), travelling at 0.6 C. One crew member at the tail shines a laser torch up the core from tail to front. What speed is the light traveling at?
I believe that I know the answer, but would appreciate responses.

Speed of light wouldn't change but the light would be noticeably redshifted.

That would have to take some getting used to. On a ship under way the color of the bulkheads would change depending on which direction you were facing!

Guess that would help teach the recruits how to tell port and starboard apart pretty quickly.

No, it wouldn't, any more than the music in your car sounds different at a red light or at 75 mph / 120 km/h. The emitter is moving with you, so the wave you detect isn't compressed by the Doppler Effect.

If that crew member pointed the torch outside the ship towards a planet, then someone in the planet would see it redshifted (assuming the ship is moving away from the planet, not just turned over to decelerate towards it).

Daryl wrote:Relativity can give you a headache. I suspect that is why the Honorverse physics seem to have a simplified version. Remarkable how it has endured the last 20 years so well.
A minor bone to chew on. Take a hollow core SD(P), travelling at 0.6 C. One crew member at the tail shines a laser torch up the core from tail to front. What speed is the light traveling at?
I believe that I know the answer, but would appreciate responses.

The speed of light as measured bya local observer is constant.

As measured by a distant stationary observer, general relativity issues arise and life is mroe interesting.

phillies wrote:The speed of light as measured by a local observer is constant.

As measured by a distant stationary observer, general relativity issues arise and life is more interesting.

It's always constant no matter the frame of reference of the observer, what changes is the perceived energy-state of the light.

Relativity. It is relative to the observer. On the SD(P) observers would see it as normal light. Assuming the light could be seen from outside the ship, an observer at rest, relative to the ship being at 0.6C in front of it, would see it having a much higher (more energetic) frequency, while one behind would see it red shifted to less energetic. All would see it as at light speed.
Thus bow chaser lasers and grasers would be more destructive if the ship was traveling at relativistic speed, relative to the target.

Joat42 wrote:

phillies wrote:The speed of light as measured by a local observer is constant.

As measured by a distant stationary observer, general relativity issues arise and life is more interesting.

It's always constant no matter the frame of reference of the observer, what changes is the perceived energy-state of the light.

Well, no. That's the special relativity statement. The general relativity statement, which was apparent even in the early radar studies of the orbits of Venus and Mercury a half century ago, is that the speed of light as measured by a distant observer depoends on the local gravitational potential at the locations of the observer and the light. This is the "Shapiro Delay".

? Gravity getting involved?
How about we go back to the fiction and presume that the same targeting software and updates to the missile in flight takes local gravity and "known" variation into account and adjust's the missile's instructions to allow for it, just like it adjusts for the projected path in the targeting solution for an enemy ship under power and maneuvering?

Brigade XO wrote:? Gravity getting involved?
How about we go back to the fiction and presume that the same targeting software and updates to the missile in flight takes local gravity and "known" variation into account and adjust's the missile's instructions to allow for it, just like it adjusts for the projected path in the targeting solution for an enemy ship under power and maneuvering?

Of course. If they can calculate sensor images across the highly distorted gravity of the double wedge bands, calculating the gravity well of a measly planet or moon should be a piece of celery.