[ExI] QT and SR

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:43 PM 7/16/2008 -0400, MD wrote:

>On Wed, Jul 16, 2008 at 1:39 AM, Lee Corbin 
><<mailto:lcorbin at rawbw.com>lcorbin at rawbw.com> wrote:
>Suppose that 20 mighty spaceships with extremely
>powerful nuclear engines are all lined up nose to stern
>on a very long runway at the spaceport, except for a 10 meter 
>stretch between each pair.
>
>is this magic string that doesn't break or melt from the mighty 
>spaceship exhaust?

As any fule kno, each vessel is propelled by a pair of mighty engines 
mounted on struts, and these are rotated by 18 degrees in each 
consecutive craft, so their exhaust flumes pass safely.

Perhaps a more interested question about the string is whether it's 
actually meant to connect stern to bow, or to extend perpendicularly 
from the hulls of craft which all launch from the same starting line? 
My impression is that Lorentz contraction is only in the direction of 
flight, but perhaps not, since (last I heard, decades ago) an 
accelerating globe does not get flattened into a pancake but 
*rotated*. When you fall into a black hole you're squeezed as well as 
stretched, and since gravity is (they assure us) indistinguishable 
from acceleration...

Damien Broderick