h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Putting aside, for a moment, the problem of fuel and all that.

If it was possible to build a "feasable" ramship (I'd like to think so) would the gravitating effect caused by the acceleration of the ramship remain constant as the ship aproached the speed of light?

I am thinking this:

The artificial gravity effect is caused by the transfer of energy from the accelerating ramship to the free objects inside the ship's compartments.

If the effect does indeed remain constant (with a constant input of energy to the engine of the ship) it would be possible to maintain an acceleration gravity indefinitely, yes?

ramjet acceleration will generate some artificial gravity
aboard a ramjet starship.
tim

Firstly the "artificial gravitation" is created directly as a result of the acceleration of 1g (from Newtons laws F=MA) so in theory IF we were able to accelerate at a constant rate of 1g after about a year we would hit lightspeed.
However Einsteins relativity shows that this would be difficult to acheive, most significantly the fact that as your speed approaches a significant part of that of the speed of light so your mass will increase due to relativistic affects. And as your mass increases, so then does the thrust necessary to keep your acceleration constant at 1g.
To some degree the proposed Bussard Ramjet method of propulsion does become more efficient at higher speeds as the hydrogen fuel intake rate would increase as speed increases for a given scoop size, thereby providing more fuel to power the engine. However again due to relativity the mass of the ship would also increase with speed, and so the amount of thrust available from a given amount of fuel would decrease as the speed of light was approached.
In a nutshell then the faster you go the harder it is to acheive a constant rate of acceleration. Hope this answers the question.
Cheers
Dunk

Artifial gravity can be provided by rotating the crew habitat
modules or by rotating the entire starship. It does not have
to be provided by the thrust from the engines. Also the maximium
acceleration rate of a feasible ramjet starship may be in the range
.01 G to .05 G

A feasible version of the ramjet must use onboard
supplies of fissionable fuels, or fusion fuels ,
or antimatter as its energy source. It will use
the energy released by these onboard energy sources
to collect hydrogen gas from interstellar space,
and to accelerate it into an exchaust jet inside its
nuclear powered thrusters.Collection of the + charge
ionized hydrogen gas from space is achieved best
with an electric field in an electrostatic ram scoop.

The density of gas in interstellar space is believed to be
about 1,000,000 ions per cubic meter of space . One mole of
ionized atomic hydrogen 1 has a mass of 1 gram , and it contains
6.02 * 10 ^ 23 power hydrogen ions. Therefore the ramjet scoop
must sweep all the hydrogen from 6.02 * 10 ^17 power cubic meters
of space to obtain 1 gram of hydrogen. 6.02 * 10 ^ 20 power
cubic meters of space contains therefore 1 kilogram of hydrogen gas.
The ramscoop negative charged electric field will electrostaticly attract the H + ions, and draw them into the ramjet engine.
This is how hydrogen gas collection is best achieved by a ramjet.
The ion collection radius of the electric field is proportionate
to the radius at which the ram scoop electric field is stronger
then the natural galactic electricv field of 1.9 * 10 ^ -19 volts.
The strength of the ramscoop electric field declines proportionate
to the inverse sqaure of the change in the distance from the ram scoop field source measured in meters.

The absolute value of the sqaure root of 1.9 * 10 -^19
ev is 4,358,898,944 . This means that a - 1 volt electric
potential difference on an ion ram scoop will decline to
1.9 * 10 ^- 19 ev at a distance of 4,358,898,944 meters
from its source in interstellar space.From these facts it
is possible to calculate the volume of space that the electric
field will attract, and collect the ions from .

The absolute value of the sqaure root of 1.9 * 10 -^19
ev is 4,358,898,944 . This means that a - 1 volt electric
potential difference on an ion ram scoop will decline to
1.9 * 10 ^- 19 ev at a distance of 4,358,898,944 meters
from its source in interstellar space.From these facts it
is possible to calculate the volume of space that the electric
field will attract, and collect the ions from . This gives an
ion collection radius of about 4,358,000 kilometers from a
- 1 volt ram scoop electric field.