What if you took the principle of magnetic acceleration, created a bunch of acceleration gateways in space, and then shot space trains through it? Have catching gates on the opposite end for the deceleration part.
What's the maximum speed that magnetic acceleration can accelerate an object to in a vacuum before the object is travelling so fast that the magnetic effect can no longer impact upon it as it passes the gates?
I wanna build some fucking space trains. What can I read that's explored this?
It's more the force of acceleration, rather than any centripetal forces, that would get you. You have to accelerate to near c over around 100 hours and decelerate over the same period of time. That's assuming the human body can withstand 6g for four days straight.
Yeah, the time scale I talked about would cause you to become a pancake.
At one g constant acceleration you'd reach near the speed of light after about a year. But I don't think anyone wants to spend a year inside a train-like vehicle
when we start talking about interstellar ships moving at near light speed, i think we can stop worrying about making them resemble trains. the ship is probably the size of mt everest and consists mostly of shielding. also, at this stage in technological development, we'll probably be pretty long-lived and able to mess with our own biology in a sophisticated way, so not only is a long trip between stars a smaller chunk of our lifespan but we can mentally adapt ourselves to the trip, e.g. superhuman memories and imaginations so a century ago feels like yesterday and your relationships with the people you leave behind don't fade in your mind over that timescale
It would take over 1400 hours to reach the speed of light at 6g by my calculations.