Mars is too far away... - Page 2

[hughv]

Remember the guy who said personal computers had no use? Didn't they laugh at Fulton? Einstein had skeptics.
There's this whole realm of literature called Science Fiction, and I'm quite fond of it.

Have you thought about this? It would take thousands of years to slow any planet's rotation down.. See, planets are really really big, newton tells us that really really big things do not like to stop moving. And unless you have rockets the size of the moon and bigger then i can say that there is very little chance we could do anything, at all.

Instead, why don't you go outside and plant trees? Thats a lot better way to save our planet.

[GrimJack]

Paul - you might notice that hughv is a complete wank - unable to offer the slightest support for any of his ideas other than "they laughed at..." as if that explained, supported, or even hinted at a wisp of an idea. I think he read/watches syfy and thinks this gives him an idea of how the universe works.

Hugh - first explain to me how you will stop a car traveling 140 miles per hour on a frozen lake. If you can stop it, then I might be interested in your ideas about how to stop 'just numbers' of angular momentum

[hughv]

I've never thought of you as a jerk prior to that post, but I've changed my mind.
Go back to basic physics and vectors. Even with your apparently very limited knowledge and imagination you should be able to solve your frozen lake problem.
I obviously can't control who participates in this thread, but I'd appreciate it if the Philistines would just move on.

In basic physics we learned about vectors, so

[lllllIllIlllI]

In basic physics we learned about vectors, so

So.. what?

[MosaicFuneral]

Have you thought about this? It would take thousands of years to slow any planet's rotation down.. See, planets are really really big, newton tells us that really really big things do not like to stop moving. And unless you have rockets the size of the moon and bigger then i can say that there is very little chance we could do anything, at all.

But.. but.. but if you can stop a jacket 140~gr .357S&W, traveling 1300fps while twisted 1:14", with 525ft-lb of muzzle energy; with your brittle teeth, why can't you stop a planet? :icon_lol:

[hughv]

So, apply an opposite force to achieve the objective.
If you guys just want to discuss why this can't be done and call me names, please go elsewhere. There's no theoretical reason a planet's orbit can't be changed.

So.. what?

[cwarn23]

So, apply an opposite force to achieve the objective.
If you guys just want to discuss why this can't be done and call me names, please go elsewhere. There's no theoretical reason a planet's orbit can't be changed.

I understand from a theoratical point of view you could achieve altering the planets orbit just like you can blow up the galaxy with a truck, a few pipes, a welder and a microwave - as shown on Macgyver and everything on that show has been proven true. So if we can blow up the galaxy with those items then why not change the orbit of a planet? I'm sure the scientists could speed up some groups of particles to the speed of light colliding with the planet but would require space travel. But it's all theoretical and not yet practical for humans to do. At least for the humans on earth.

[GrimJack]

I've never thought of you as a jerk prior to that post, but I've changed my mind.
Go back to basic physics and vectors. Even with your apparently very limited knowledge and imagination you should be able to solve your frozen lake problem.
I obviously can't control who participates in this thread, but I'd appreciate it if the Philistines would just move on.

In basic physics we learned about vectors, so

You still have not explained how you will stop the car. Does this 'opposite force' appear out of nowhere? Please bring the car to a halt - use your knowledge of vectors to explain where the energy of the car goes; while you are at it explain how you apply this 'opposite force'. I might be a jerk but you have not offered anything to your own thread but fairy dust and mystical hand-waving smoke and mirrors.

There's no theoretical reason a planet's orbit can't be changed.

Changing a planets orbit is not what you are postulating; what you postulate is stopping a planets rotation which is not anything like changing a planets orbit.

I have a set of Feynman's lectures on physics here (I: 18-5) where he states that (much math here that you can read for yourself sometime) "One extremely important case of the [above] theorem is the law of conservation of angular momentum: if no external torques act upon a system of particles, the angular momentum remains constant. [...] For an object going around in a circle, the angular momentum , of course, is the mass times the velocity times the distance from the axis....

This gives us 6.4185 × 10^23 kg * 868.22 km/h * 1 (for calculations purposes we can consider Mars a perfect sphere and allow the radii to average to one) =
54649.22494^23 Joules or 1.3319001123e^11 megatons or
133,190,011,230 megatons of energy

This is not any kind of energy that you can pull out of your butt or just hand-wave away with a casual "applying the energy is trivial"

So if you want to change Mars' orbit - I suggest you forget about stopping its rotation and concentrate on altering its orbit w/o putting it into a cometary or sling-shotting it out of the solar system.

[babug]

I think, Earth is the right place to live. If we, the humans, avoid making our life sophisticated with the help of technology; automatically by evolution we will be capable to tolerate the temperature or whatever it will be.

[hughv]

From the very first Post:"It seems to me we need to stop the rotation first, in order to apply directional force to change the orbit. I'm thinking many large rocket engines arranged along the equator (Fusion powered, of course)."
In problems like this it's important to understand the objective, and it seems to me from your answers that you haven't been paying attention.
I am now mounting a small, gimballed jet engine on the front of your car on the frozen lake, and using a computer to control its thrust. It's now stopped.

You still have not explained how you will stop the car. Does this 'opposite force' appear out of nowhere? Please bring the car to a halt - use your knowledge of vectors to explain where the energy of the car goes; while you are at it explain how you apply this 'opposite force'. I might be a jerk but you have not offered anything to your own thread but fairy dust and mystical hand-waving smoke and mirrors.

Changing a planets orbit is not what you are postulating; what you postulate is stopping a planets rotation which is not anything like changing a planets orbit.

I have a set of Feynman's lectures on physics here (I: 18-5) where he states that (much math here that you can read for yourself sometime) "One extremely important case of the [above] theorem is the law of conservation of angular momentum: if no external torques act upon a system of particles, the angular momentum remains constant. [...] For an object going around in a circle, the angular momentum , of course, is the mass times the velocity times the distance from the axis....

This gives us 6.4185 × 10^23 kg * 868.22 km/h * 1 (for calculations purposes we can consider Mars a perfect sphere and allow the radii to average to one) =
54649.22494^23 Joules or 1.3319001123e^11 megatons or
133,190,011,230 megatons of energy

This is not any kind of energy that you can pull out of your butt or just hand-wave away with a casual "applying the energy is trivial"

So if you want to change Mars' orbit - I suggest you forget about stopping its rotation and concentrate on altering its orbit w/o putting it into a cometary or sling-shotting it out of the solar system.

[GrimJack]

From the very first Post:"It seems to me we need to stop the rotation first, in order to apply directional force to change the orbit. I'm thinking many large rocket engines arranged along the equator (Fusion powered, of course)."
In problems like this it's important to understand the objective, and it seems to me from your answers that you haven't been paying attention.
I am now mounting a small, gimballed jet engine on the front of your car on the frozen lake, and using a computer to control its thrust. It's now stopped.

Thank you for actually responding to my questions.

Now, I have worked out how much energy you are going to need to stop the rotation (I will allow you to hand-wave the fusion engines), how will you apply it? You probably do not want to release the full 133,190,011,230 mT at one time.

I am not up on planetary mechanics so I am interested in what will happen to the angular momentum - will changing rotation change revolution? There is quite a bit of angular momentum in Mars' revolving around the sun and I am pretty sure that there is a pretty strong relationship between the 2.

While I was thinking about that, stumbled over the engineering staff working on the installation of the fusions engines. A project that size would take a huge staff. There would be the engineers who work on the engines, the staff needed to keep the engineers fed, clothed, and comfortable (the military generally count on something between 10 and 20 support staff for each soldier in the field and I imagine that this would be a similar situation). It would take many years so many would want to bring their families, which means you will have to colonize Mars long before you could even fire up the engines and I am willing to bet that the Martians (what else would you call a complete society colonizing Mars) would not allow anyone to fire up those fusion engines. This implies that there would be a revolution to stop the change in Mars' revolution.

Did you really start this thread for that pun?

[GrimJack]

I think, Earth is the right place to live. If we, the humans, avoid making our life sophisticated with the help of technology; automatically by evolution we will be capable to tolerate the temperature or whatever it will be.

I am not sure what point you are trying to make here:
Are you suggesting it is our technology that is the problem?
Are you suggesting that evolution is the solution?

Can you offer a more cogent argument?

[hughv]

And thank you for actually reading my question.
First, is it actually necessary to stop Mar's revolution to change the orbit? I don't see another way, but I'm way out of my field here. I did get to work on the first Lunar Lander when I was at Grumman in the late 60's, but I was in instrumentation.
Logistics would certainly be a big factor. I'm more inclined to shuttle personnel and equipment from an orbiting platform than to establish a full-fledged colony. There would need to be some kind of Mars side installation, of course.
I see the engines arranged installed and arranged such that they can be rotated in the proper direction to oppose the rotation of Mars, and to gradually apply the necassary force to slow and stop it.
Later, they would be swiveled to apply the necessary force to change the orbit.

Thank you for actually responding to my questions.

Now, I have worked out how much energy you are going to need to stop the rotation (I will allow you to hand-wave the fusion engines), how will you apply it? You probably do not want to release the full 133,190,011,230 mT at one time.

I am not up on planetary mechanics so I am interested in what will happen to the angular momentum - will changing rotation change revolution? There is quite a bit of angular momentum in Mars' revolving around the sun and I am pretty sure that there is a pretty strong relationship between the 2.

While I was thinking about that, stumbled over the engineering staff working on the installation of the fusions engines. A project that size would take a huge staff. There would be the engineers who work on the engines, the staff needed to keep the engineers fed, clothed, and comfortable (the military generally count on something between 10 and 20 support staff for each soldier in the field and I imagine that this would be a similar situation). It would take many years so many would want to bring their families, which means you will have to colonize Mars long before you could even fire up the engines and I am willing to bet that the Martians (what else would you call a complete society colonizing Mars) would not allow anyone to fire up those fusion engines. This implies that there would be a revolution to stop the change in Mars' revolution.

Did you really start this thread for that pun?

[MosaicFuneral]

This gives us 6.4185 × 10^23 kg * 868.22 km/h * 1 (for calculations purposes we can consider Mars a perfect sphere and allow the radii to average to one) =
54649.22494^23 Joules or 1.3319001123e^11 megatons or
133,190,011,230 megatons of energy

So... You're saying we'll need incisors about 2.06E+74 x 1.29E+80 x 1.29E+79 Ym large(I may have gotten sloppy and mistyped my exponents and zeros)?

[cwarn23]

We can produce that much energy. As some guys theory (forget the name probably newton) says that for every action made by a force there as an equal reaction. So that means if we can make a narrow consentrated impact on mars then we would push it in the direction we like. And how to create the energy... Simply first create a floating space station that always stays in the same position of space. Then create a rip in the universe which is stored in a generater and collect all of the energy that bursts out of the rip into a buffer. From that buffer/zpm it can then be taken to another location where it is usefull however the power is always being generated in the same spot. So that would be a great form of unlimited energy which will easily do the job once we have the technology.

You still have not explained how you will stop the car. Does this 'opposite force' appear out of nowhere? Please bring the car to a halt - use your knowledge of vectors to explain where the energy of the car goes; while you are at it explain how you apply this 'opposite force'. I might be a jerk but you have not offered anything to your own thread but fairy dust and mystical hand-waving smoke and mirrors.

Changing a planets orbit is not what you are postulating; what you postulate is stopping a planets rotation which is not anything like changing a planets orbit.

I have a set of Feynman's lectures on physics here (I: 18-5) where he states that (much math here that you can read for yourself sometime) "One extremely important case of the [above] theorem is the law of conservation of angular momentum: if no external torques act upon a system of particles, the angular momentum remains constant. [...] For an object going around in a circle, the angular momentum , of course, is the mass times the velocity times the distance from the axis....

This gives us 6.4185 × 10^23 kg * 868.22 km/h * 1 (for calculations purposes we can consider Mars a perfect sphere and allow the radii to average to one) =
54649.22494^23 Joules or 1.3319001123e^11 megatons or
133,190,011,230 megatons of energy

This is not any kind of energy that you can pull out of your butt or just hand-wave away with a casual "applying the energy is trivial"

So if you want to change Mars' orbit - I suggest you forget about stopping its rotation and concentrate on altering its orbit w/o putting it into a cometary or sling-shotting it out of the solar system.

[GrimJack]

And thank you for actually reading my question.
First, is it actually necessary to stop Mar's revolution to change the orbit? I don't see another way, but I'm way out of my field here. I did get to work on the first Lunar Lander when I was at Grumman in the late 60's, but I was in instrumentation.
Logistics would certainly be a big factor. I'm more inclined to shuttle personnel and equipment from an orbiting platform than to establish a full-fledged colony. There would need to be some kind of Mars side installation, of course.
I see the engines arranged installed and arranged such that they can be rotated in the proper direction to oppose the rotation of Mars, and to gradually apply the necessary force to slow and stop it.
Later, they would be swiveled to apply the necessary force to change the orbit.

You do not seem to understand the implications of your question and my answer. So I will spell it out for you:

The engineering project you propose (changing Mars' orbit) is larger by a factor of 100 than the problem you propose to solve (the colonization of Mars).

You state the estimate of $1 trillion over 10 years to get to Mars and you think a project that would cost over $100 trillion and take at least 100 years and offer no guarantee of success is a good solution? You do not even know if you need to stop Mars' rotation to change Mars' revolution. You probably could not stop Mars' rotation without destroying Mars and you probably could not change Mars' orbit like you want because any change you make to Mars' orbit will crash it into the sun or send it out past the Oort Cloud.

I know you are not going to accept my conclusions but at least talk with someone who knows something about orbital mechanics and planetary stresses (hell why not go to Ask Yahoo and see what they say).

[GrimJack]

So... You're saying we'll need incisors about 2.06E+74 x 1.29E+80 x 1.29E+79 Ym large(I may have gotten sloppy and mistyped my exponents and zeros)?

I am getting pretty dense in my decrepitude but I can't see the pun - cut me some slack

[GrimJack]

We can produce that much energy. As some guys theory (forget the name probably newton) says that for every action made by a force there as an equal reaction. So that means if we can make a narrow consentrated impact on mars then we would push it in the direction we like. And how to create the energy... Simply first create a floating space station that always stays in the same position of space. Then create a rip in the universe which is stored in a generater and collect all of the energy that bursts out of the rip into a buffer. From that buffer/zpm it can then be taken to another location where it is usefull however the power is always being generated in the same spot. So that would be a great form of unlimited energy which will easily do the job once we have the technology.

Well, actually I was thinking more like creating a small black hole and punching through back to the Big Bang and borrow some of that energy and then, if we build a huge space station around the black hole to anchor a large spring out to the station and store the energy from the big bang by winding up the space station. We could then move the black hole to the center of Mars and let spring unwind stopping Mars. Then move the space station to where we want the new Mars orbit to be and voilà the spring snaps Mars from its old, boring orbit to the new improved orbit.

It is such an elegant solution - the black hole, the spring, moving the black hole - those solutions are trivial.

[MosaicFuneral]

I am getting pretty dense in my decrepitude but I can't see the pun - cut me some slack

Sort of extending on the earlier "catch a bullet with your teeth" post. Of course, anything that large would simply obliterate galaxies.

[GrimJack]

Heh,heh! Sabre-toothed mandibles