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Interplanetary Superhighway
rotenberry writes "The current issue of Caltech's Engineering and Science magizine contains the article "Next Exit 0.5 Million Kilometers - A Caltech/JPL collaboration explores the 'Interplanetary Superhighway.'" which describes "...the Interplanetary Superhighway - 'a vast network of winding tunnels in space' that connects the sun, the planets, their moons, and a
host of other destinations as well. But unlike the wormholes beloved of science-fiction writers, these things are real. In fact, they are already being used." However, it takes a very long time to get there."
Because all of these tunnels connect through Atlanta where there is a "change of plane".
An Interplanetary highway, eh? Better head down to the pub, in a hurry!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
...getting the rights to the book title "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Work sucked, until it became unemployment, when it became slightly more tolerable. -Tet
I wonder if this applies to the seven rules for spotting bogus science?
What you reap is what you sow
dont the planets move around the sun at different rates? So how would it be possible to make a fixed structure to "drive" to a planet?
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
We can't even build a highway from Seattle to Honolulu. How about thinking globally and acting a locally?
I have been pwned because my
That's what this is. You don't get quite the comfy ride in the back of a Vogon Space Cruiser or anything, but it's still hitchiking.
Now if only I could get a free ride to the Midwest or East Coast this way.
Tweet, tweet.
Of course it takes a long time... you forgot rule #1... the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line... err... is it a curved line? no... wait... ahh screw it...
Ok... it's a friday night... I'm sitting at home, with nothing better to do than try and be a smartass on slashdot... Oh lord, I've wasted my life...
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Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The project is a failture from the start...what good is it when this "highway" doesn't deliver porn?
I'll form my OWN solar system! With blackjack! And hookers!
"The Universe is big. Really big. You might think that it is a long way to the chemist, but that is nothing comapred to the universe."
'ta
What this is about is mapping out stable and semi-stable manifolds (paths) in space between planets. That is there are places in the solar system if you put an object, it will naturally draft toward certain other positions. For NASA, JPL, etc. The important paths are those linking the planets and other destinations of interest hense the high way metaphor (which is just a metaphor, not even a precise one at that. A embeded manifold is the precise mathematical term) These manifolds are created by the interaction of the planets and because of that can be thought as fixed relative to them, or as moving with them. (Which is why manifold is more precise term sense it does not denote fixed position nor one dimensionalness)
it's talking about how the gravity wells of planets make for low-energy paths from place to place, like how we choose to launch a mars probe when earth and mars are at certain positions relative to each other, maybe using the moon along the way. a well-known concept but the article has lots of flashy language.
Al Gore.
someone had better tell them to wait 5 damn minutes, because if I don't find out what the friggin question is, im gonna go insane, or, well, as insane as someone who was just blinked out of existence can be...
Yes, the shortest distance is a straight line. But if you can bend space so that the straight line between two points is shorter, it won't take as long to get there!
Space-folding technology is still a work in progress, though.
When do the tolls go into place? Would we have to STOP even though the system will probably automated? We do have to be human sometime and make it counter-productive...
In other news the board of McDonalds collectively wet themselves with excitement at the though of the enormous expansion in drive thru's
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
How am I to hitchhike off this god-forsaken planet without my towel?!?!
The thing about the wormholes is, though, that they're governed by non-linear dynamics, and are therefore extremely convoluted and difficult to calculate. But that doesn't imply that they're static, just that they're usually not the shortest distance between points A and B.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Now you'd have to watch for asteroids passing near any of the L1 / L2 (maybe L3, too? The article doesn't mention it, though, and it would be hard to observe) points of Earth-Sun, in addition to just watching what comes near the Earth/moon system itself.
Here is a project I would love to support.
Massive amounts of numbers to be crunched, tons of routes to be discovered, and all by lowly computers with nothing better to do.
Proving that some ungodly number of ProcHours can figure out a RC-72 bit key is meaningless to me.
This is the sort of science humanity is interested in. Onward to Mars!
-Brett
I read the article and understood most of what they were talking about...but I knew I had heard something related to this before.
The Poincare Conjecture
IIRC, solving this problem should make some major advances in this 'tube-theory'. Can anyone explain how though?
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Like most Amerikans, I want it all, and I want it NOW.
Plus, those gravitational speed ups are slowing down the planet! Eventually, we'll suck up so much momentum to cause the earth to stop revolving around the sun, and we'll burn up!
Act now to fight the destruction of our gravitational resources!
Bus, as far I understand, that "highway" must be very dinamic, is like saying that in a year, 6 months and 3 days there should be a "road" to Pluton, but if you try this every other moment it will be very costly or the trip will last 4 months more.
And, well, this "highway" is beloved as well for good hard sci fi writers, taking advantage of gravity to do "impossible" tricks is very used, and is funny to see everyone surprised in the story of that kind of tricks
I am not a rocket scientist, but I think this article uses flashy language because it's talking about something way more complicated than using the moon along the way. They mention, for example, that the Earth to Mars path is much harder to figure out than Jupiter to Saturn (and I got the impression that it would take thousands of years).
This isn't just a way to get from planet to planet using less fuel -- it's a way to get around using no more than a shove in the right direction, starting from between the Earth and Moon and ending up anywhere you want. That's not your father's rocket science, and it's bloody cool -- flashy language or not.
This technique uses a concept called a Lagrange Point, where gravity from multiple bodies (usually in a orbiting situation) cancel each other out -- which results in a place where a parked object can sit and stay in place in relation to the orbiting system.
This technique is used to keep the SOHO sun observation satellite at Lagrangian point 1 in the earth/sun system, so that it keeps a constant view of the sun.
The concept behind this is extended in this instance to reveal tunnels which offer the 'path of least resistance.'
In fact, this has been discussed on Slashdot before. Slashdot users have also discussed Lagrangian points in relations to one or both of Earth's sub-moons.
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
They have discovered a new type of route throughout the solar system, besides the conic sections typically used today, requiring orders of magnitude less energy. They can also predict up to 100 orbits into the future, with multiple ports of call on the itinerary, which is much more sophisticated than the simple slingshot method you're alluding to.
They are using chaos theory and orbital instability to their advantage. That is something most certainly not done in traditional conic orbital maneuvers, which are of such a short duration and simple nature that chaos and instability don't enter into it.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
(Hint: the article never makes any reference to any kind of "fixed structure".)
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
Raise your hand if your first reaction to this article was to try to find a copy of Ltool...
It'll get nudged this way and land in the back yard of the lucky (corporation, government, fill in the blank) via these EXACT orbital pathways.
When it does, you can tell the grandchildren, "Bah, that's OLD news. We were talking about it on slashdot before your PARENTS were even born."
Is it fascism yet?
... is that for the most part we have too much information in our heads, but no common sense to use it. This article does a wonderful job of illustrating, in a relitively reasonable manner, how we can do a lot of work traveling between planets without expending much energy!
BRAVO!!!
They have managed to move beyond their meager geekness and actually apply concepts that come from Lagrange, chaos theory, etc... and use them to better mankind and also explain previously unexplained phenomena.
I know way too many nerds who cannot do this for the life of them. They have lots of knowledge, but they are useless!!!
A bit of a rant... I know, but it's frustrating to read all the comments by idiots who can't even read the article before they reply...
This is just sig!
Here is a previous discussion of this subject.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
A set of five of these balance points, called Lagrange or libration points, exist between every pair of massive bodies--the sun and its planets, the planets and their moons, and so on. -- from the article.
Use the Parker-Sochacki solution to the Picard iteration. The orbital positions and therefore the gravity field [and thus the derivatives] become a simple matter of additions and multiplications, and everything comes out as a polynomial function of time.
The original method was published in Neural Computing.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
you know you've been reading too much slashdot when you think it says "...these things are real. In fact, they are already being SUED"
Am I the only one who finds this redundant?!?! =P
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
"Use the Parker-Sochacki solution to the Picard iteration [jmu.edu]. "
Using this, the Next Generation writers could tell how many more times they could use the "Caught in a time loop" plot device.
A change of ideals... "this can be shown as the circulatory system of a worm" (loosely quoted). OMG, are we not the supreme being of the galaxy???? Can anybody imagine????
by Donovan Leitch of the album Cosmic Wheels, 1973)
I was impressed like everyone when man began to fly
out of earthly regions to planets in the sky
with total media coverage we watched the heroes land
as ceremoniously they disturbed the cosmic sand
I awe with admiration we listened to the talk
such pride felt they, such joy to be upon the moon to walk
my romantic vision shattered when it was explained to me
spacemen wear old diapers in which they shit and pee
chorus:
oh the intergalactic laxative will get you from here to there
relieve you and believe me without a worry or care
if shitting is your problem when you're out there in the stars
the intergalactic laxative will get you from here to mars
they don't partake like you and I of beefy burger mush
their food is specially prepared to dissolve into slush
absorbed my multi-fibres in the super diaper suit
otherwise the slush would trickle down inside the boot
you may well ask now what becomes of liquid they consume
a pipe is led from penis head to a unit in the room
the water is recirculated, filtered for re-use
in case of anti-gravity, pee gets on the loose
wherever man has conquered on the quest for frontiers new
I'm glad he's always had to do the no. one and two
it makes it all so ordinary just like you and me
to know the greatest heroes they had to shit and pee!
what is the problem with it being a dupe exactly?
I didn't see that article at the time.
The new link was more informative, I think, than the original.
Repetition is a good thing. I think it's interesting the obsession that has grown against duplicate stories... so called. Like all the stories on 9/12 about the Twin Towers thing. We heard already, sheesh! If something is news, you cover developments.
That's the way it goes, an interesting thing, stays interesting. New people are born or listen for the first time to the interesting news.
-pyrrho
When the vessel approaches a planet, e.g. the moon, it speeds up, then it travels with very high speed around it, like a slingshot - but: When it leaves the orbit, it gets slower again until it reaches the original speed.
You write: "least energy" - so, where does this energy come from?
I can think of getting faster from A to B by doing
a flyby near a planet because in between, the vessel accelerates to very high speeds and hence does need less time for the whole distance compared to a trajectory without "a planet in the middle".
Or am I missing something?
I want to play.
Great article uber-parent, thanks for posting it.
How can they talk about this stuff and not mention Hamiltonians?
Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
Where the three-body problem is solved,
Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
And the cold virus never evolved.
(chorus)
We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
And a kilogram weighs half a pound.
(chorus)
If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
If we just find a big enough wrench.
(chorus)
I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
And living up here is a bore.
Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
'Cause I'm moving next week to L4!
(chorus)
CHORUS:
Home, home on LaGrange,
Where the space debris always collects,
We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
Solar power and zero-gee sex.
--Home on Lagrange (The L5 Song)
© 1978 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm
http://www.jamesoberg.com/humor.html
(from very bottom of page)
Dr. Demento On The 'Net!
All the math makes me brain spin, but it would be seriously cool to have a linux-based "navigator".. give it the current date and your position and find the nearest routes to Jupiter.
You know I wonder if this idea opens the thoughts for an interplantary positioning system (IPS)... in order to know where you get off, you'd have to know where you are.
meh
Where's my flying car. I want a flying CAR! This gives new meaning to the name "Disney World".
With this stuff talked about in another slashdot article, it seems that I could just use my super-human blood to hold my breath as I walk the distance and never get tired!
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
Calm down people, alot of you are getting your feathers ruffled over the science/numbers of this all. You missed that this was in a "magizine" meaning it's magic.
Visit www.seriouslythough.com
Cant wait till the Vogons have to explode the earth to make way for the new piece of the interplanetary superhighway.
The Vogons are comming ! the Vogons are Comming !
Be calm now, don't panic
WRT sailing routes from England to NYC, it really depends on your boat. Multi-hulls pioneered the southern passage because they are much faster on a reach or broad reach, and not quite as good to windward. Some modern overpowerd monohulls might be faster on the southern route, but it is more of a toss up.
They don't really go into the details of the actual paths because of how hard it is to picture the multi-dimensional spaces that would make it clear. It is remarkable how everything changes with the third body in what seems like a simple system at first glance. I think I get some of the fundamentals intuitively. The "stable" manifold leading to L1 would be a group of orbits that tend to pump the spacecraft into more and more excentric orbits, while the "unstable" manifold leading to L2 does the oposite. On the other hand, the physics is reversible, so there are trajectories taking you toward the unstable L2 state and away from the stable L1.
When they start talking about orbit transfers, you are trying to find where the systems from neighboring planets link together. This involves considering seperate 3-body problems of Sun-Spaceship-Planet for each planet where the manifolds of each system are rotating with the planets, and are only synchronized at certain times. They don't really say why the link ups are harder to find (or longer to wait for) for Earth/Mars than the outer planets. If I had to guess, it is probably related more to the scaling the the orbit distances and the planet masses. The Earth and Mars aren't that massive, but it still might be more related to the closer orbital periods.
To me, it is just fascinating that there can be so much to investigate and study in the pure mathematics of a few simple equations. Most of this was just about the near equilibrium equations for uncontrolled objects. The slingshot trajectories represent another group of solutions that have some special characteristics. Very cool stuff. It really points the way for a lot of robotic missions over the coming centuries. With solar power, the fact that it take a long time to get there doesn't matter as much as the fact that you can keep manuvering for new missions long after the initial mission planning.
The above statement is fundamentally the way the universe works. There is gravity (modulo quantum gravity :-) because both of these statements are basically true.
You move towards a mass because it distorts spacetime so that the "straight line" you're travelling in actually goes towards the mass.
Two thoughts from the interesting article:
1) Why are we sending robots to comets to fetch material when we could just send one to L4? The article mentions that cometary dust and space junk will gather there.
Let debris from all over come to us. Sort of like Men in Black, where they confiscate alien technology at a single port of entry. Deep space exploration from the comfort of your own (planetary) home.
2) The article mentions that a killer asteroid was riding the "rails" and the earth stepped out onto the tracks in front of it and got hit. Which makes me wonder if future asteroids on a collision course -- not necessarily on one of these low-velocity tracks -- could be deflected with smaller forces that previously envisioned? Throw some switches on the tracks, as it were.
Set the ship to self-destruct in fifteen minutes. 90% of the time, whatever problem you have will resolve itself within fourteen minutes and forty-seven seconds.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
I was always told by my physics teacher that centrifugal force was imaginary. But then he also told me that when an aeroplane stalls, it's very difficult to restart the engine, so I don't trust him overly much. Help me here, physicists...
So if I'm in one of those big fairground rides; the ones like big centrifuges, where you stand inside a spinning drum:
Centripetal force is the inward axial force that makes an object move in a circular path, right?
The drum is spinning, so I'm undergoing a constant inward acceleration 'cos I'm moving in a circular path. This acceleration is provided by the wall pressing into me. Fine. That's a centripetal force.
But there's an equal and opposite reaction on the wall. Isn't that force, acting on the wall, a cetrifugal force? It's not a centripetal force, because it's not what's constraining the wall to a circular path. The wall section's centripetal force comes from the girders supporting it.
Explanations gratefully received.
This link I gleaned and posted on Slashdot the last time we had an article about this. There are actually several interesting papers about this on the net, look for Lo in xarchiv and elsewhere I think. Downloaded a whole bunch last time.
Broadcast a message, in the clear, about having to use the Corbomite device (was used twice).