quote:Original post by DevLiquidKnight
Would lazers in space be visible if say you were inside of a nebula where it is more dusty thus the lazer would be projected upon the dust particals?

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I don''t think the dust is glowing, so there''s at least enough dust to scatter star light, and a laser would be more intense (not more powerful) than a star, especially at a far distance. So I guess it would scatter the laser light pretty good.

quote:Original post by Metorical
If a ship is moving at the speed of light and it fires a laser in the direction of travel then the laser will also be travelling at the speed of light (observed from a fixed observer) and the laser and ship will travel at the same speed and maintain the same position relative to one another.

This is complete nonsense !

First nothing physical, i.e. with mass, can travel at the speed of light. One way of looking at it is that it would take an infinite amount of energy and infinite time to accelerate an object to the speed of light.

Second the speed of light is constant for all observers, including a quickly moving spaceship: even for a ship moving at 99% of the speed of light, when it fires a laser the speed of light measured on the spaceship is the same as the speed measured by people on the ground.

This is the principle of [special] relativity: the speed of light is the same in all inertial frames. For this to be true other things have to be allowed to be different: in particular distance and time are not absolutes, but are different for different observers. The mathematics of it is pretty straightforward once you get your head around the principles.

I''ve not seen it used in games or films: both tend to fake the mechanisms of high-speed travel rather than use relativity. Maybe someone will come up with an interesting way of using it one day.

quote:Original post by DevLiquidKnight
Is it true in this specific scenerio, say when you have a space ship and your going in one direction and you continue to go in this direction. You rotate the ship around and now your cannons on the ship are facing the direction you are coming from and the back of the ship is moving forward. Now with that in mind the ship fires a bullet the direction the ship is coming from or to the direction of the front of the ship. Will the bullets that are fired go the direction they were shot at or will they continue to move with the ship?

For bullets fired backwards it depends how fast you are going. If the bullets are much lighter than the ship the ship''s speed will hardly be affected. In this case the speed of the bullets will be

bullet_speed = firing_speed - ship_speed

Where ''firing_speed'' is the speed out of the gun as if it were on the ground.

So if the bullets are fired faster than the ship''s speed they will have a positive speed in the direction they are fired. If they are fired slower they will have a negative speed, i.e. they will be going in the direction of the ship, though at a slower speed.

1- If a ship fires a bullet while it is accelerating (both go same direction), it eventually catches up with the bullet.

2- If there is a nebula to refract laser light, the friction might be significant.

Air (gas) resistance can be calculated by
Fw = Cw * r * D * v*v
So the force Fw(resistance) is a constant (higher = more air resistance, varies for every shape) r = the air pressure, D is the air density and v*v is your velocity squared.

This could mess up pretty bad if the elapsed time between succeeding simplation steps vary too much. For a game it will do fine unless your velocity is very big.

If you don''t understand forces (Fw) and how they relate to movement I''ll happily explain. For accurate results this won''t do I''m afraid. It will do for a cool little space game.

The simple formulae will probably mess up, certainly with quickly varying factors (hig accleration for instance).

Your ship could lose control of istelf when it''s going too fast and needs to stop. It will have a hard time accelerating in the opposite direction in order to stop.

It could also be caught in the gravity of some planet/star/big object. That is: it''s engine is too weak to fight the planet''s gravity.

If you implement these physics and play around with them you''ll see.

The higher the speed is, the less manouvrable(sp?) the ship is. So, yes, eventually, the ship will be VERY hard to control.