>>>>>...
>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>Strange. The garage conundrum was posed to me (if I'm remembering it right) by a talented mathmetician friend some 20-odd years ago. So he put me off track I guess ;-)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>On the other hand, if the spaceship shortens infinitely, then it probably never would reach the desination planet. Every time it seemed to be getting close, it would shorten and be just as far away as it always was. I'm assuming, of course, that it shortens from the front, but maybe it shortens from the back at the same time, in which case, I have no idea where it would be in relation to the planet at any given time (which time is dilating anyway).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Hah! I started sending almost the exact same message to you then got to think of it in the middle, then rejected it. I thought, maybe it IS getting infinitely short BUT it's an infinitely short "dot" with coordinates by the planet. i.e. an object, although approaching infinite shortness (let's say it's become the width of a hyphen) can still move through space. As the fore end appproaches the destn, even if contracting, it can't contract any further back than its aft end, otherwise that would become like "negative contraction". >-S
>>>>>>
>>>>>>But you forgot to apply Heisenberg's uncertainty principal.
>>>>>>"The more precisely the position is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known in this instant, and vice versa."
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Since you know you're approaching the speed of light, you can't know where you are, so how do you know you're nearing the planet at all?
>>>>>
>>>>>You set the timer for the engine to switch off at the required point?
>>>>>
>>>>>>And of course, this doesn't even begin to invoke the concepts of the Chronosynclastic Infindibulum.
>>>>>
>>>>>Is that where it begins to disappear up its own peristaltic fundamentulum?
>>>>
>>>>Sorry, my bad. That should be Chronosynclastic Infundibulum. No wonder you were confused.
>>>
>>>Hhhyeahh! That was what threw me. Now I see where you're coming from ......... NOT! :-)
>>
>>Kurt Vonnegut - "The Sirens of Titan", and IIRC also "Slaughterhouse 5". Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.
>
>Read quite a few Kurts (incl. Ice 9?) but not those.

Slaughterhouse 5 is, imho, his finest work. I'd go so far as to say it's truly brilliant. Sirens of Titan is the world's longest 'shaggy dog' joke. I quite enjoyed it.