How to avoid objects when traveling at greater than .75 light speed. or How Not to Go SPLAT?

After asking my question about seeing black holes in your path between the stars, I also wondered abut other more mundane objects. Black holes affect large areas of space so even if you didn't get 'close' it could still affect your trajectory. The answers there are good for black holes.

Now, say we get to traveling at very fast speeds. How do we keep from going splat? Running into almost anything at say .75 light speed I think would be catastrophic. Even something the size of a marble would have devastating consequences. (someone want to do the math?)

I know space is huge and it's actually fairly unlikely that you'd ever hit anything between planets much less between stars, but...

So I'm guessing we'd have to have some kind of deflector shields for small object, maybe even a way to turn the impacts into energy for the ship. But at some point the objects will be dangerously too big and avoidance would be the better idea. How do we detect and avoid object the size of a pickup (or larger maybe a small mountain) when traveling at these speeds? Or does our reaction time (light bouncing off object and returning to be observed + the time it takes for the ship to adjust course) dictate how fast it is safe to travel?

I'm assuming the ship would be doing the monitoring and course adjustments. This question is for conventional linear travel, I want to ask a question about 'Alcubierre drives' later.

posted almost 10 years ago

bowlturner‭

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