Stop to Destination

Stop Trip to Destination

What if we prefer to stop at the destination? We accelerate to the half-way point at 1g and then immediately switch the direction of our rocket so that we now decelerate at 1g for the second half of the trip. The calculations here are just a little more involved since the trip is now in two distinct halves (and the equations at the top assume a positive acceleration only). Even so, the answer turns out to have exactly the same form: M/m=exp(aT/c)-1, except that the proper time T is now almost twice as large as for the non-stop case, since the slowing-down rocket is losing the ageing benefits of relativistic speed. This dramatically increases the amount of fuel needed 1g (g=9.81 m/s2), its crew experiences the equivalent of a gravitational field with the same strength as that on Earth. If this acceleration could be maintained for long enough, the crew would eventually reap the benefits of the relativistic effects that increase the effective rate of travel.