Okay, I’m an idiot. Just to preface this. But let’s say I’m in space. There’s no wind resistance right? If I accelerate, I’ll maintain that speed. Why can’t I just burn more fuel and go faster?
In: 194
No you are absolutely right, you can do that.
In fact that is how trips to the moon and Mars works. We use enough fuel to get a good speed going then ride on that speed until it’s time to slow down to land or enter orbit. But since you can’t bring much fuel into space, because it is sooo heavy, we can’t use too much for acceleration or we don’t have any left for slowing down and going back.
If you went in one direction out to deep space eventually you would slow down however. There actually is resistance in space, just very, very spread out. Some particles just hang around in space, even the rare air molecule. Other particles fly close to the speed of light and will hit your spaceship in the opposite direction with a lot of energy. Even starlight will eventually push your ship around.
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