Firstly, I was'nt sure where to post this so MOD's please feel free to move it. There has been alot of talk about using a meteor to travel through
space by 'hitching' a ride on it. This got me thinking and I have a new idea I would like to bounce off everybody here.
For those of you who go fishing, I think we need to create a long line with a torpedo or kite (meteor) on it, we catch a meteor and have an earth
based line with low tension that is constantly being fed out at the same rate the meteor is traveling - the edge of space is only 350 km from earth
obviously we would want to catch this meteor further out, if we could direct the meteor with small propulsion systems on either side we could direct
it to our ideal distance, we attach our "longline", which would need to be able to withstand a bit of tension caused by earth's downward pull of
gravity on the line, or we could simply have the "line" fed out from a position in space - this would "limit" how much line we can supply. But the
great thing about some thing like this is once the line is in place on this comet that is constantly moving we could could add on mass which would be
able to use the comet's existing momentum - now I am sure this would slow the comet down over time but I am sure we could attach a lot of mass to our
destination using this method - but I am no physicist so I would kindly ask for some understanding from the knowledgable here.
Another Idea I had was that maybe we don't need to keep the comet going, maybe we could direct its momentum straight in to where we want to go moon,
mars etc and we then have a line between point A and B that we could then ancor down and use to send things along.
I know these are currently just crazy ramblings, and in some ways just crazy, but our science is getting crazy and we need to think crazy to achieve
some of the goals we have. I like trying to think outside the square but do not posses the understand of physics to scrutinize this idea - so please
help me - Thanks
I'm sure many of you have thought similar things, I have thought of this since young but was reminded by the comet speak.
Please scruitinize and feel free to contribute any idea's you may have - the more brains the better!
edit on 18-2-2011 by byteshertz because:
(no reason given)