This^^^
Time dilation occurs when travailing at near the speed of light to protect the law of physics which states nothing is faster than light. Otherwise if you were in a ship travailing at 99.999% the speed of light and you shot an alien ship ahead of you travelling at the same speed, your torpedoes would break the speed of light. But something got to give right? Therefor time is slowed down on the ship as a result of travailing at near light speed because the velocity of light can not be passed by the tornadoes. This is the universes way of enforcing the speed limit of light, it slows time. At least that’s what I took away from Planet of the Apes:p
I think an intersting way to interpret historical events surrounding the theory of relativity is that einstein happened to put in the right maximal value for speed. There could have been some other “thing” that was the actual fastest speed or speed limiter that could have been harder to observe. The way it turns out though, the “thing” is all around us in the form of radiation and einsteins constant was already measured.