Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
Well, Campbell gets lots and lots wrong, but the main thing for me is that he uses limitations of sea-going vessels or of aircraft for his spaceships.
This is sort-of true for waterships and aircraft. But not spaceships. They don't have anything for their wings or hull to press against, and so for spacecraft the most efficient was to move back the way they came (outside gravity wells) is to just flip end for end and accelerate directly in the opposite direction.
A curved course for a spacecraft is wasteful way to reverse course, as you're accelerating perpendicular to the way you want to go, twice!
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But doesn't their mass keep going on Course X? So even if they flip over, they have to overcome their inertial mass to reach zero movement on Course X, then accelerate on Course -X?
Excuse my ignorance here. I find this really interesting and thank you for starting this thread up.