timmdeeg said:
The astronauts measure the acceleration at the top and at the bottom (which is bigger) and the ruler length (which is their proper distance) of the rocket. This situation should correspond indistinguishable to two shell observers in Schwarzschild spacetime who are separated by the same proper distance and are measuring the same acceleration each.
In general, no, these two situations are not the same, because spacetime is flat in one and curved in the other. That means the relationship between the ruler length between the two observers and the accelerations they measure is different for the two cases.
Let's look at the math. We have three known quantities: two proper accelerations ##a_1## and ##a_2##, with ##a_1 > a_2##, and a proper distance ##d##. Now, for the two cases, how are these quantities related?
First the flat spacetime case. Here we have, in Rindler coordinates, and in units where ##c = 1##, ##a_1 = 1 / x_1## and ##a_2 = 1 / x_2##. Since space is flat in Rindler coordinates, we have ##d = x_2 - x_1##. So we have the following relationship between the known quantities:
$$
d = \frac{1}{a_2} - \frac{1}{a_1}
$$
Now the curved spacetime case. Here we have , in Schwarzschild coordinates:
$$
a_1 = \frac{M}{r_1^2 \sqrt{1 - 2M / r_1}}
$$
$$
a_2 = \frac{M}{r_2^2 \sqrt{1 - 2M / r_2}}
$$
$$
d = \int_{r_1}^{r_2} \frac{1}{\sqrt{1 - 2M / r}} dr
$$
The integral looks messy, but it actually has an exact solution:
$$
d = \sqrt{r_2 (r_2 - 2M)} - \sqrt{r_1 (r_1 - 2M)} + 2M \ln \frac{(\sqrt{r_2} + \sqrt{r_2 - 2M})}{(\sqrt{r_1} + \sqrt{r_1 - 2M})}
$$
We can rewrite the accelerations in a way that will help:
$$
a_1 = \frac{M}{r_1 \sqrt{r_1 (r_1 - 2M)}}
$$
$$
a_2 = \frac{M}{r_2 \sqrt{r_2 (r_2 - 2M)}}
$$
This let's us rewrite the formula for ##d## as follows:
$$
d = \frac{M}{r_2 a_2} - \frac{M}{r_1 a_1} + 2M \ln \left[ \frac{r_1 a_1}{r_2 a_2} \frac{ \frac{1}{\sqrt{r_2 - 2M}} + \frac{1}{\sqrt{r_2}} }{ \frac{1}{\sqrt{r_1 - 2M}} + \frac{1}{\sqrt{r_1}} } \right]
$$
As you can see, the two relationships, flat spacetime vs. curved spacetime, are quite different. It should also be evident that there is no way to extract a value for ##M## or ##r_1## or ##r_2## from the flat spacetime formulas.