Albertgauss said:
"there will be an immediate Doppler shift so their instruments will need to "retune","
The "retuning" must be because of the change in reference frames. The ship begins in one inertial frame, progresses through a series of them until it ends up in a final inertial reference frame. Is this what was meant by that?
There is no need to think in terms of a change in reference frames. Any single Inertial Reference Frame (IRF) can handle any scenario in Special Relativity. Look again at the diagram that I copied from the other thread in post #2. Now I have to admit that I didn't really look at it carefully myself and I see that I have made some wrong statements concerning how the Doppler changes for each ship. During the first leg of their trips, both ships see the other one red-shifted but at the Coordinate Time of 20 months (their Proper Times of 16 months), the Doppler shift goes away and they each begin to see the other ship normally because they are both traveling at the same speed in the same direction. Then at the Coordinate Time of 35 months (their Proper Times of 28 months), they each begin to see a blue Doppler shift of the other ship.
But these effects are not dependent on any particular IRF. All IRF's will indicate the same Doppler effects. Furthermore, even when people refer to an accelerated object (ship) as changing reference frames, they generally mean rest frames and in the above IRF, neither ship is ever at rest.
To illustrate, I'm going to upload another copy of the above IRF diagram but it will be a little smaller:
I want you to notice the ratio of the thin black lines intersecting the red dots along the thick red line representing the ship that is on the left. For the first leg of the trip, there are 4 red dots per thin black line. This means that the Doppler ratio is 0.25. The red ship sees the black ship's timing as 1/4 of its own.
Then at the red ship's turnaround, at its Proper Time of 16 months, there is a one to one relationship between the black lines and the red dots which continues until the red ship's Proper Time of 28 months. At that time the red ship sees the black ship turn around and he begins to see the timing of the black ship at 4 times his own which continues until all three observers meet up again.
Now you might be tempted to think (at least I was) that if we transformed to the rest frame of the red ship during the second half of the trip, we would also see the black ship at rest during at least part of that time interval:
Well it was a nice idea but it didn't pan out. Nevertheless, some of the signals that were sent while the black ship was at rest in this IRF arrive at the red ship while it is at rest.
But you should also notice that the three different Doppler ratios that we observed in the first IRF are present in this IRF in exactly the same way. Look at the Proper Times to see that the changes in Doppler ratios occur at the same times as far as each observer is concerned. Can you see that?
Finally, for completeness sake, here is the rest frame for the red ship during the first half of the trip:
Again, note the same Doppler ratios at the same Proper Times.
Albertgauss said:
I know about the energy requirements of lightspeed and the impossibility of today's technology to put such a ship. I believe that mankind will find a way someway to get there, though, and that's okay to speculate about. In these posts, I just assume the energy requirements are met, even though there's certainly no "engine" yet, probably not for centuries.
Probably not for ever. Have you tried calculating the energy requirements?