Navy Astronaut Mark Kelly's space worn CONA Breitling auction begins...

I think I found my new signature.

I realize you were joking, but duing the Falklands conflict, the Royal Navy kept all their clocks on London time (zulu) even though they were three time zones ahead.
That would be like deploying from Norfolk and keeping your clock set to Eastern time even though you were in the Med.

But to your point, what time do Astronauts set thier clock to? They leave from Canaveral (Eastern Time) but Mission Control is In Houston (Central Time). Or do they all work on zulu time?

STS used Mission Elapsed Time (MET). ISS uses Zulu.

I started surfing looking to find my own answer and learned they use Universal Time which comes from the Naval Observatory... So I guess you could say that Astronauts are on "Navy Time"!

http://www.usno.navy.mil/USNO/time/master-clock/international-time-scales-and-the-b.i.p.m

[quote="MasterBates, post: 684651, member: 10106"Go damn near the speed of light, and time slows down, even though it's perceived as normal where you are.[/quote]

It slows down for someone looking from the outside in, not for the person at that speed. Hence the "relative" part of "relativity!"

Pretty sure I'd be the guy to forget to press start on the stopwatch while I was on the launch pad....

Exactly. Each watch thinks it is the "slow watch" and that the other is the one moving really fast. Hence the problem appears opposite depending on which watch is used as the reference. But both are equally right. Watch A says watch B went :55 in his 1:00 and Watch B says Watch A went :55 in his 1:00.


That's also why noone except cosmologists need to care, because we are always the "slow watch."

If you want to really confuse things you can think of length contraction (objects going very fast appear shorter) in this paradox. A 33 ft T-6A going near the speed of light can appear to fit in a 20 ft garage. But inside the T-6 the pilot would say the garage appears to be only 12 ft long and the T-6 is normal size. Both are correct.

BTW, excuse my nerd-gasm thread jack here. I busted out my textbook, I'm really bored, and I need this...

So what all you nerds are saying is that this 32000 dollar watch will be wrong....and right?

What happens if you put the shuttle on a treadmill?

The universe implodes!

An African or European shuttle?

Makes no difference as long as they're both falling at 0 G.

An African shuttle, maybe, but not a European shuttle.

I would initially suspect that it's nearly impossible to fall at 0 G. Orbits are a 1 G freefall with a sufficiently large tangential velocity.

Really? What does the G-meter read while doing a ridgeline crossing, inverted, in a space shuttle on a treadmill, approaching the speed of light.

That is the true question.

42

42 is the wrong answer, as evidenced by the fact that we still exist. If it were the correct answer, then the question and answer would be known simultaneously, causing the known universe to wink out of existence and be replaced my something even more bizarre and inexplicable.

C'mon, everyone knows treadmills can't go inverted.

NERD VORTEX!

$44,500...

I'm guessing 75K+

What a strange thread. We went from Einstein and relativity, to Monty Python, to Douglas Adams and ended at Top Gun within 15 posts!

What a strange trip this thread has taken!