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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
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...
---
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
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.
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...
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.
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 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.
It's not. You have to constantly calculate where the low energy paths will be and and then choose one that will take you where you want to.
When the planets move around these paths will change and to get to the same place you may have to take a different 'route' for journeys that start at different times.
Calling it a 'network of tunnels' is a poor simile, lets see if I can do any better. It's more like a set of deep valleys connected to each other over a small rise. The valleys are formed by the gravity of the planets and moons, and the layout of the valleys change as the planets move around.
To get from point A to point B, you can either use lots of energy to go in a straight line up and down the deep sides of the valley or if you follow the bottoms of the valleys and aim carefully at the connection between different valleys you can use less energy to move.
As space is frictionless, not only do you have to spend a lot of energy to get up the side of the valley (ie getting the spaceship up to speed for the journey), you also have to spend a lot of energy to stop from rolling on past where you want to go to (ie slow the spaceship down once it there). This is a problem if you want to send a probe to go and look at several planet/moons in a mission and spend a reasonable amount of time around each one. If you just accelerate/decelerate to get to and from each orbit you'll need a lot of fuel.
What's cool about this is that if you want to, you can bounce around within the valley so long as you don't roll at the low connection to another valley. This means that the spaceship/satellite could stay in one orbit around a moon for a while, and then when the time comes to move on, it can fire its rocket for a very short time just to aim at the low connection to the next valley. This will then make the ship move into orbit around the next planet/moon and it will be in a stable orbit around that until it decides to move on again.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
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....
... 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
IIRC, the Poincare conjecture has to do with being able to map the number of 3-dimensional simply connected (no holes ala the donut), compact (think finite expanse, although that isn't correct; the definition of compact is a bit more technical), boundaryless (maybe) manifolds (surfaces) to the 3 sphere.
The article has nothing to do with this. The article is simply discussing searching for trajectories whihc minimize the energy to get from A to B. The tube/wormhole terminology seems awful, if not incorrect (wormholes are very different beasts).
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"
Evidently the research is more immediately useful for the techniques learned in complex multi-body interacting systems problems, which fluid dynamics guys are also fascinated in.
Dyolf Knip
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