The thread for space cadets!

hobbsyoyo said:
haha so what's his Earth-destroying solution?
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The most realistic suggestion was to move Jupiter towards Earth and let the Jovian giant swallow/tear apart Earth.



11) Ripped apart by tidal forces

You will need: Earthmoving equipment.

Method: When something (like a planet) orbits something else (like the Sun), the closer in it is, the faster it orbits. Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun, moves faster along its path than Earth, which in turn moves faster than Neptune, the furthest planet.

Now, if you move Earth close enough to the Sun, you'll find that it's close enough that the side of the Earth facing the Sun wants to orbit the Sun faster than the side pointing away from it. That causes a strain. Move Earth close enough, within an imaginary boundary called the Roche Limit, and the strain will be great enough to literally tear the planet Earth apart. It'll form one or more rings, much like the rings around Saturn (in fact this may be exactly where Saturn's rings came from). So our method? Move the Earth to within the Sun's Roche limit. Or, better, move it out, to Jupiter.

Moving the Earth out to Jupiter is much the same as moving the Earth in towards the Sun, the most obvious difference being your choice of vectors. However, there is another important consideration, and that is energy. It takes energy to raise or lower an object through a gravity field; it would take energy to propel the Earth into the Sun and it would take energy to propel it into Jupiter. When you do the calculations, Jupiter is actually rather preferable; it takes about 38% less energy.

Alternatively, it may be simpler to move Jupiter to Earth. The theory works like this: build a massive free-standing tower or "candle", with its lower end deep inside Jupiter's depths and its upper end pointing into space. Put machinery inside the tower to pull hydrogen and helium gases in as fuel, through ports in the middle section, and vent these elements out through fusion thrusters at the top and bottom. The tower is called a "candle" because it burns at both ends, see? Now: the flame directed downwards into Jupiter serves to keep the tower afloat (although some secondary thrusters would be needed to also keep it stable and upright). But this lower flame has no direct effect on the Jupiter/candle system as a whole, because all the thrust from the flame is absorbed by Jupiter itself. The two objects are locked together, as if the candle is balanced on a spring or something. The top flame, therefore, can be used to push both the candle and Jupiter along. The top flame pushes the candle which pushes the planet. This is a little unorthodox, and it only works on gas giants, but as means for moving planets it's at least as plausible as the mass-driver and gravity-assist methods described on the earthmoving page.

Earth's final resting place: lumps of heavy elements, torn apart, sinking into the massive cloud layers of Jupiter, never to be seen again.

Feasibility rating: 9/10. As before, impossible at our current technological level, but will be possible one day, and in the meantime, may happen by freak accident if something comes out of nowhere and randomly knocks Earth in precisely the right direction.

Source: Mitchell Porter suggested this method. Daniel T. Staal clued me in on the fusion candle technique, which he got from this Shlock Mercenary comic, which in turn was inspired by the novel "A World Out Of Time" by Larry Niven.
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Heheh. That just reminded me of a dream I had a few years back. It started out with some aliens dying, but over the course of the dream, Jupiter auto-magically moved out of its orbit because the solar system was in chaos for some reason, and Jupiter made a close pass and raised all sorts of hell for Earth, primarily through tidal effects on our atmosphere (I remember a long, ferocious windstorm, with a cabin-like home in the foreground and a waxing gibbous Jupiter behind it). At the end, Earth was Jupiter's newest moon.
 
warpus said:
That is indeed awesome. I guess the plan is even more reusable launch systems? Now let's see if this technology is scalable. SpaceX has been doing amazing things lately though! Good for them
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Yeah they want to eventually make the Falcon 9 and Falcon 9 Heavy fully reuseable to brind down launch costs. The grasshopper is one step in that direction as it's a technology demonstrator that helps them refine their technique.

They are being pretty clever about their reusability approach as well - they even plan on (eventually) using the launch-escape system of the Dragon capsule to do double-duty and enable precision landings in the future.

And I have to say that most of the cool things they are doing are enabled by generous amounts of NASA dollars but I see that as a good thing. :cool:
peter grimes said:
So what's the ballistic capability of that grasshopper? Maybe MeteorMan should ask to borrow it ;)

EDIT:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=12391092&postcount=1670
Click to expand...

It doesn't really have a ballistic capability, it's just a demonstrator and a way for the company to cut their teeth in this arena. It can only go up and come back down in one piece in a controlled, precise manner which in and of itself is an achievement.
 
a damage control article about the meteor thing a few months back . With lots of carrot and sticks . Like how the angle was so low and there are still 9 millions of rocks out there . And of course , lots of wisdom on how the Russians didn't mistake it for an ICBM . How could they , if the head of their Space Agency briefed Putin on the 8th ? ı love the scientist dude angry at Russians putting new glass panes to Windows ; for the glory of the scientists they are supposed to shiever in February ... Ah yes , still remembering the science dudes appearing on news channels and talking on how the second one would be a better bang . Wasn't that headed for D.C. before it went behind the Sun ?

the link is from a site ı was on a read-only mode for years ; ı was nearly having an heart attack when ı saw ı was not ban list anymore . Alas , job description for Starfleet Admirals doesn't include minding North Koreans ...
 
I hope this is the correct thread. I thought those interested in such things would like to know that NASA is finally doing something useful with the Mars Rovers, and has drawn a large phalus on mars.
mars_rover_oo_err.jpg
 
So what did you do at work this week?

Oh not much, just drew a giant dick on the planet Mars. Same old, same old really.
 
That's it, humanity has achieved the ultimate goal.

(Someone pointed out somewhere that the one thing which is constant in absolutely every known human culture throughout history and before is that people will draw penis graffiti everywhere. Now we have done it on another planet.)
 
I think it would be a wee bit difficult to leave graffiti on gas giants. ;)

Although, one could try lighting their farts on fire and see what happens.... :mischief:
 
there was a time when RAF pilots were so happy drawing stuff up above in the sky with their racy Meteors ; one is so obligated to read about the last time ...
 
I have to get me a Canadian 5 dollar bill. It looks awesome!
 
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