McGuiness wrote:So there's no evidence that the TF could achieve or needed relativistic speeds. The mass vs. energy curve going to infinity when you try to accelerate to near the speed of light (where you really get the benefits of time dilation) is just a bit daunting when it comes to fueling a ship! Since you can't orbit anything at those speeds, the Hamilcar would end up several hundred light years from Safehold before the 1000 years were up.
If you find yourselve a nice and really massive black hole, you can go into orbit at almost c.
Well, that's overstating it a bit: more precisely, the major part of the atoms you are made of can go on that orbit. And that's not healthy...
As to the rest of the relativistic speed topic: Setting aside the issue of a reasonable course, everything larger than a molecule on your way gets a kinetic energy sufficient to destroy your spaceship. If I calculated that correctly
, a small pebble weighing in at 50g traveling at about 0.85c would have a kinetic energy in the range of an atomic bomb - which would be released upon impact....As to Hamilcar Barca: If find it a bit hard to draw parallels between a person and a ship. Now, if that ship would've been named Constitution, that'd be somewhat telling. But Hamilcar? Sorry, I don't see strong hints there.