posted
While I was doin my getting ready for summer workout on the bicycle, I was re-reading SotG the chapter where Mazer Rackham sits down with Bean and makes the offer to cruise around in space while they researched a cure for him. ( ah the wonders of relativity )
Bean objected because the Starships currently being used took 2 years to actually accelerate to lightspeed,2 years to decelerate, and (for him) an additional 2 years just to come back to earth and by that time Bean's number would be up. Mazer tells him that theres a new messenger ship and now it only takes 2 weeks to accelerate and so on and so forth. Doesnt this make Beans ship faster than Ender's? I was wondering since I know Mr. Card is going to write a post CotM and it would seems more plausible for Bean's children to meet up with Peter/Ender and the gang if his starship was faster. Maybe Bean might make it as well?
And if it takes only 2 weeks to speed up how much more in the future will Bean be than Ender? Assuming that he's going faster he would be more in the future right? Or more time would pass for Ender than Bean.
Just something im debating. Unless Ender didnt get an old ship and his was able to accelerate faster as well. I dont have a copy of Ender's game with me so i can't look it up. Something to think about
(Edit: They would be going the same speed after almost 2 years but Bean would be way ahead by then ... WAY>>>>>AHEAD )
posted
First of all, you should put a spoiler warning in the title for this thread.
No, that does not make Bean's ship faster. The fact that it can reach near-light speed sooner means that it has better acceleration. But once they are up to speed, we don't know which one is actually faster.
As far as the relativistic effects are concerned, it kinda has the effect as though Bean's ship were faster, even if they both have the same final speed, since Bean will spend more of the time at that faster speed than Ender would.
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posted
I'm assuming that as the years go by, the acceleration times drops lower and lower and lower until someone discovers the Park Shift, and then the acceleration time is entirely negligible. I'm glad we're ramping up to it.
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quote:The starship performed the Park shift; in an immeasurable moment its velocity changed relative to the rest of the universe. Or, rather, the theory had it that in fact the velocity of the rest of the universe changed, while the starship remained truly motionless. No one could be sure, because there was nowhere to stand to observe the phenomenon.
--Speaker for the Dead, near the beginning of chapter 6
Of course, the book also says that the "Park Instantaneity Principle" was developed "along with" the ansible, so maybe it's already around. Who knows....
posted
From a vantage point of 3000 years in the future, anything within a couple hundred years would seem like "along with."
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