Dangers of Space Travel: Not being able to stop!

Not able to slow down in space? Goodbye.....

Why is this so dangerous?

You don't really need much fuel to be able to fly around in space. Really you just need it to reach a speed and to stop the ship.  Due to Newtons Laws, the ship can maintain speed without needing to continuously run the engines. The fortunate thing is this makes traveling in space affordable and also possible. We wouldn't be able to conduct space missions while carrying all of that fuel. The unfortunate part of this whole mess is that it does actually require much energy to slow down which brings us to how this can be dangerous.

Whats the big deal?

If you were to say use to much fuel in any operation and didn't have enough to finish slowing down, one of two things could happen. You crash into some entity and die, or you float off endlessly in space and die. If you were going top speed and lost the ability to slow, you would float off to eternity with near 0 chance of rescue. It would require a ship faster than the speed you are going to ever reach you.

Of the two options, which would you rather have and why?

1. You can plumett into some very hard thing, and die instantly.


Rocket crashes for your enjoyment.

2. You could slowly die over the course of you either running out of oxygen (most likely) or supplies such as water.

Comment on your favorite way to run out of power in space!