What is mass dilation?
Relativity and space travel “What are the implications of mass increase, time dilation and length contraction for space travel?” The short answer is “not very much”. For space travel of the sort that we can conceive, the effects due to time dilation and length contraction are tiny. This does not mean that they cannot be measured: it is not highly difficult to measure the very small time dilation effect. But the practical implications are minimal. Return to top of page and menu Space travel See also the site Space on the UNSW HSC site for background. Please explain why the forces acting on an astronaut increase to approximately |3W| during the intial periods of launch. The question is ambiguous: is |3W| the total force acting on her, or is it the force that the spacecraft exerts on her? Before takeoff, the astronaut is lying in her seat and is not accelerating (a = 0) so the total force on her (F = ma) is zero. Her weight is a downwards force W, where the magnitude of W is mg, so the se
