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."

Comments

Of course it takes a very long time.......

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Because all of these tunnels connect through Atlanta where there is a "change of plane".

Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[dreadknought]

I wonder if this applies to the seven rules for spotting bogus science?

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[karlm]

IIRC from physics classes, is the force making it hard to walk on a moving merry-go-round not the centripetal force?? I thought Coriolis was only a pseudo-force, not a real one.

Ehh... you're 3/4 right. Centripetal force is real and coreolis force is "imaginary". Centripital force is force towards the center of rotation, keeping you from traveling in a streight line. Centripital force doesn't make it hard to walk on the merry-go-round; centripital force allows you to stay on the merry-go-round. You're thinking of the "imaginary" centrifugal force that appears to counter-act the centripital force you are applying with your feet.

Centrifugal force and Coreolis force are both imaginary forces used as short hand for taking second time derrivatives (calclating accelerations) in rotating reference frames using polar coordinates . If you're spinning at a constant speed about the merry-go-round, you keep the same polar cooarinates when in fact, a lot of corce is acting on your body to keep it constantly changing direction at a fairly high rate. In the reference frame you ae always at rest, so you don't say that momentum change is balancing out the force you are using to keep yourself "still" in the rotating reference frame, you say that this imaginary "centrifugal" force is acting on you. The two statements are equivalent, but one is a technical gloss.

Now suppose you try moving in relation to the rotating reference frame. You want to travel in a streight line in the polar coordinates. Well, since the frame of reference is rotating, a streight path in non-rotating space is a curved line in the rotating reference frame, and the amount of aparent curvature is dependent on speed of travel relative to the rotating reference frame. So when you try and walk in a streight line on the merry-go-round with out correcting for rotation, you more or less walk in a streight line in the non-rotating reference frame. In the rotating reference frame, your path is curved. The easiest way to do calculations is to make up frorces that would havepushed your path into that curved shape. It's all just short hand so that everything doesn't need to be translated to and from the stationary reference frame.

Even at the equator, you experience the coreolis effect, it's just that your axis of rotation is parallel to the ground. At the equtor, running East appears to make you lighter, running West appears to make you heavier, jumping up appears to push you West, and dropping off a ledge appears to push you East. One explination of why thy always launch spacecraft in an eastwardly-traveling orbit is that that way the coreolis force helps, rather than hinders the spaceflight. In a non-rotating reference frame this is equivalent to saying that it already has a lot of speed in an easterly direction, so blasting off to the west actually means sloing down a lot rather than using the speed it already has due to traveling at the same speed as the ground.

It's all equivalent, sometimes it's jsut easier to do the math one way. If nobody has done the math to figure out how the imaginary forces get added in in your situation, then you need to translate everything into a non-rotaing, non-accelerating frame of reference and do the calculatins and translate them back into your rotating frame of reference.

It's kinda like special relativity. If you forget the formulas, you can re-derrive them by looking at everyhting in a stationary reference frame and looking at a photon clock and a photon yardstick and figuring out what apears to happen to one secodn and what appearsto happen to one meter and what appears to happen to one kg being acted upon by 1 Newton. It's just a lot easier if you remember the formulas Einstein derrived for you instead of having to transate everything to and from the stationary reference frame.

We have one person to thank for this...

[commodoresloat]

Al Gore.

The structures aren't fixed

[Macrobat]

The structures aren't fixed. The basic idea is, though, that the most fuel-efficient way to get to another planet/moon is not just to wait until it's reached it's closest point and blast off, but to calculate when and where the gravity wormholes offer the most aid/least resistance. They are akin to the Lagrange points between the earth and the moon, where the pulls from the two sources create an area where the least resistance still keeps an object in place, sort of like a patch of dirt on an icy surface. (That's an analogy for what happens, not how it happens.)

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.

for those who didn't understand the article ...

[Heisenbug]

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.

You are so full of crap

[p3d0]

The article says a whole lot more than that, my dear whore. It has a lot of cool ideas if you would take the time to skim it.

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.

Re:Any distributed computing people listening?

[La Temperanza]

Have you taken a look at DistribFold? I mean, these things and SETI@home are cool, but folding proteins actually helps people now.

oh dear

[gid13]

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"

Hmm.. who wants to start a project on sourceforge?

[bigattichouse]

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.