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Can Rockets Create Gravity?

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September 17, 2025

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Neil answers if a “constant-acceleration” space drive could give artificial gravity. Yes—if you thrust the whole trip you feel acceleration like gravity (Einstein’s equivalence principle). The fast Mars plan is: accelerate to halfway, flip the ship, decelerate (“flip & burn”), but it demands huge propellant or refuel depots. Most current trips are coasts: push off Earth, drift, then fall into Mars—so astronauts are weightless because they’re in free-fall, not because “space has no gravity.” They also riff on movies that get this wrong and end with a head-scratcher on photons, time dilation, and redshift.

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Can Rockets Create Gravity? · Startalk Plus · Sentinel