Monday, January 30, 2012

How come no one ever came up with an idea for interstellar travel involving intergalactic slingshot maneuvers?

We know what a slingshot maneuver is, don't we?



Where you use a gravity field to achieve thrust at a reasonable conservation of fuel.



Well, who says you can't do that at the outer edges of the solar system?



Planets are moving all the time - i assume you could even pick the direction you wanted to travel in.



What do you think?How come no one ever came up with an idea for interstellar travel involving intergalactic slingshot maneuvers?NASA missions to the outer planets use that manouver all the time.



For example, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%鈥?/a>



Picking the direction in which you want to travel is not so simple. The slingshot manouver steals momentum from the planet or other body and transferrs it to the spacecraft. The momentum of the planet is what it is. If you can use it to achieve your mission, that's great, but if it points in the wrong direction, then you're out of luck.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation鈥?/a>



Like everybody else said, space is big. At our current level of technology, even when we use the slingshot trick, the best we can do is launch probes that take twenty and thirty years to reach the edge of our solar system. The next nearest star is something like half a million times further away, and most of the stars you can see at night are a LOT further than that.How come no one ever came up with an idea for interstellar travel involving intergalactic slingshot maneuvers?
It takes a very massive body to give a good slingshot maneuver. If we tried to use Pluto or even Neptune, the effect wouldn't be as good as it is with Jupiter. If we have interstellar spacecraft, a great idea would be to use stars as slingshots. This is used in many sci-fi novels as a way for long-distance probes to continue to explore without using too much fuel.How come no one ever came up with an idea for interstellar travel involving intergalactic slingshot maneuvers?It's not necessarily a matter of scientific knowledge, it's a matter of budget. It would probably cost so much to manufacture such an endeavor that no single country could pay for it.



Any way, it would still take decades to get to other stars. One thing at a time, let's get to Mars first!
That has been done before. Many space probes have used slingshot manoeuvres to get to Jupiter, Saturn, and beyond. However, it still takes them years to reach the outer edges of the solar system. To go beyond will take even longer.How come no one ever came up with an idea for interstellar travel involving intergalactic slingshot maneuvers?Most space craft do use slingshot maneuvers already. It becomes difficult in the outer solar system though



A) because with too many gravitational factors the calculations become complex, so since just getting to the outer solar system requires gravitational boosts already, many planets and maneuvers would be necessary, which may or may not be possible because enough planets may never be aligned correctly.



B) Bodies in the outer solar system are REALLY far apart, approximately twice as long an orbit for every planet out you move so there aren't many objects out there to make assists.



C) It would take incredibly long to get a craft out there and there isn't really anything to see so it would kind of be a waste of time. If you're thinking of extrasolar exploration, you will be disappointed to know that for the next few light years around the sun all there is is space debris, the Oort cloud. Then 4.5 light years away comes the next star, but we would never get there with a craft.How come no one ever came up with an idea for interstellar travel involving intergalactic slingshot maneuvers?
Yes surely , I am , in my imagination travelling to Jupiter .
Intergalactic distances are much, much too great for the gravitation of a distant galaxy to have much effect on a spacecraft in another galaxy. Gravity decreases by quite a lot as the distance increases. The gravity could be calculated, but it would be very, very small.How come no one ever came up with an idea for interstellar travel involving intergalactic slingshot maneuvers?
they already do!! that is why all launches are heading east. that is the way the earth is moving or rotating nearly a thousand miles a hour!!

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