Space travel via tether between asteroids
blog.cerowrt.org
blog.cerowrt.org
These ropes are rigid but you can vary the length, so you can do a bunch of interesting pendulum behaviors to accelerate yourself.
If you had a long tether between two objects of different weights, and the whole system is rotating, I feel like you could get some interesting acceleration effects by rapidly shortening the tether (assuming its strong enough to not snap)
The graphics were super simple, flat colors
My game turned out to be stunt gp.
> A number of space tethers have been deployed in space missions.[1] Tether satellites can be used for various purposes including research into tether propulsion, tidal stabilisation and orbital plasma dynamics.
Tether propulsion -> Space tether: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tether_propulsion
How many RPMs/Hz are necessary for DC (or AC) motors?
Poi (performance art) / Glowstringinging https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poi_(performance_art)
Poi spinning > Types of poi https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poi_spinning
Spiral wraps (where the string wraps around the hands causing the glowsticks to spiral around into the hands) are a great approximation of a tether under tension shorting.
Flowers (where the arm spins in the same direction as the glowstick creating the visual of an epicycle) could be a nice approximation of two bodies tethered where one has significantly more mass than the other.
Lunar cycler: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_cycler
(Edit)
Gravity; IDK maybe cooling of solar panels painted white on the underside. But then the complexity of ungainly rendezvous
Started slow but fun trajectory (for an incredibly dark book). Last 1/3rd is basically a separate book.
I really would love to have a sequel to Seveneves that focuses on the world from the last part of the book (trying to avoid a spoiler here...)
That said, I Jordan more credit that than (the still-humous) George RR Martin, since Jordan didn't spent pages building up characters and relationships only to kill them off.
With the others, they maybe end abruptly but you can see it coming because the entire crazy journey you were on up till then reached convergence
For example, if you were on a station attached to 2019 BE5[0], that asteroid rotates once every 15 seconds. With a 60km tether, slowly unwound out from the asteroid, you'd be moving at something like 12km/s. (60km * 3.14 / 15s). All you'd need to do is wait until the plane of the orbit lines up with the destination to have in mind and release the asteroid on the end of the tether.
Billions of dollars and billions of miles after once you arrive you can only observe, you can't feel anything because you have to be in a spacesuit the whole time, no air, no gravity, no wind, no plants, no water, when you can feel some air is artificial.
What's the point of it all? Hubble pics + a serious VR set basically give you the same visual experience which is the only thing that maybe could be worth about going there.
Messing around in low-earth orbit, or even exploring our nearest neighbours in the solar system is like dipping our toes into a vast ocean. It's a first step on a much bigger adventure, an adventure that won't happen in our lifetimes.
It may seem impossible now, but crossing oceans in sailing ships, let alone aircraft, will have seemed impossible once.
I believe that without the familiar elements waiting for us at whatever the destination might be, it would be an asylum not an adventure.
If you play a word association game using the word 'adventure' the first thing that realistically come up to mind are:
1) Hike
2) Mountain bike trail
3) Motorcycle trip
4) Boat trip
Etc. etc.
All the above adventures have the common thing that while you are out and about you feel the elements very strongly on your skin and all your 5 senses are intensely stimulated .
In space you'd be confined and in your spacesuit your whole life and you'd also be confined in the spaceship or artificial spaces. No stimulation at all, maybe only the visuals would be stimulated but you'd be mostly staring at empty space, and the space that is not empty such as clusters and stars might be beautiful to look from afar but they are so big that you can never quite touch them, unlike a flower or a sequoia.
If that is the case there are billions of activities ranging from unprotected sex to drug smuggling to drug consuming to riding motorcycles to hitting on wives on cartel bosses in Latin America...all right here on Earth and available to those who want to try them for a few bucks.
I still mantain that feeling the elements on your skin and have all 5 senses stimulated while moving fast (but not too fast that you need protection) is the best definition of adventure and the one that most people would agree on...AKA "I'm flying Jack!!" , what would Rose say when going to space?
"I am being propelled in vacuum by a mix of carbon, sulphur, and potassium nitrate, I can't feel anything because I am in my spacesuit strapped to the seat of this alluminium spaceship which I hope is airtight but this indicator here tells me I am moving faster than every human ever did, so it must be true, Jack!"
And come on, we have plenty of great astronaut quotes: "One small step for a man, One giant leap for mankind" ring any bells?
Novelty is exactly the opposite of what you said.
If you have never been on the Everest (or whatever activity really) and you experience it for the first time your sensation will be the same regardless of you being #1 or #75000 in the global ranking, because it will be the first time for you.
Let’s talk practical examples, how many people have reached 120mph on a motorcycle? Millions if not billions, but when YOU do it for the first time it’s not like you are busy thinking of the millions of people who did it before you, you just have a good time.
Fuck. And I mean fuck as a verb, should we not have sex anymore because we are not the first humans to ever have sex? The first people should have never fucked because they were not the first organisms to fuck?
People who say holding their kid after they are born is the best moment of their lives, they feel on cloud 9 even though they are human #11,477,764,778 to experience such feeling
At the end of the day space enthusiasts should test their belief and go live in Antartica for some 8 months during the winter and see for themselves.
And that’s not even a true test because Antartica is the Garden of Eden compared to space
The "global novelty" aspect of adventure (aside from the "personal novelty") comes from the fact that you're entering the unknown. The adventurous nature of an activity is diminished if it's already common knowledge what you can expect from the experience.
Billions of people do the aforementioned activities yearly and it puts a smile on their faces. And we have been doing such stuff for millions of years
Some hundreds people have been to space and they all look like they attempted and beat the locked cabin staying record, because for the mind and the body it’s exactly that.
A locked cabin with a great view is still a locked cabin
Seeing stuff in pictures or videos doesn’t count and even if it did still 99.9999999% of the Earth would be unknown to you
And I am not even starting on fast vehicles, seeing videos or pictures of other people riding fast vehicles is absolutely not the same as doing it yourself
Same with drugs, sex, music, falling in love etc
There is unknown on Earth for 1000 human lifetimes, probably much more than that
Sure, the density of "stuff" is very irregular. But I can look out my window at more Earth than that right now. I agree with your point that there's enough on Earth for at least 1000 human lifetimes, and it's pretty fractal in nature.
We also have pretty nice pictures of the Olympus Mons so if you are snubbing the Grand Canyon and the Great Bahamas Basin just because someone else already took pics, then you should snub the Olympus Mons as well, otherwise you’d be committing a logical fallacy.
And besides, the frontier of the unknown as it pertains to humanity as a whole has moved to the micro and the nano, all stuff that requires boring research and experiments costing billions as opposed to Wild West adventure.
So, although I'm willing to snub Olympus Mons a little bit if we really have such good photos of it (I don't think we do), since that does reduce the scope of the unkown. But I would still think there's much adventure to be had there as one of the first people to explore it.
By whom? By you? Dont think so. Anyway this is stupid, if you want the thrill of first time exploration you can just avoid researching any info on the topic and head directly to your destination and explore it without any assistance
Much like Dakar riders are forbidden from using GPS
The other point (which is really why I responded) is to note that space travel isn't just for humans. Robots, especially AI-driven robots, may be able to explore and exploit our solar system far better than bio humans ever could. It would make a nice division of responsibility: we get the Earth and her unique and valuable biosphere, they get the rest of the system and it's vast resources. I believe the relationship could be deeply symbiotic and fruitful for both cultures.
Nope , this is the first time that you won't find water, plants, air when you arrive at destination.
Also the first time that you'll have to live forever in a spacesuit, also the first time you won't be able to feel the elements on your skin, say goodbye to rain, wind, sun on your skin , smell of flowers, smell of rain on the soil etc. and whatever alien elements you find there, you cannot feel either because you have to be in a spacesuit the whole time.
The only thing that maybe are better there than on Earth are the visuals, but that's also a question mark, not every planet has a first row view of the Pillars of Creation. At the same time the view of the Milky Way from Earthly spots such as the Atacama Desert is pretty spectacular, and for everything else there is Hubble + VR.
Oh, another thing we can offer is 'reboot services' in the event of intense Solar activity. In return, maybe they can deflect an asteroid or comet for us. I think it will work out!
I'm basing this on one of dang's comments on being a "good citizen on HN":
Downvoting for disagreement is not always bad, but it sometimes is. There should be some nuance here. Don't be indiscriminate. When a comment is blatantly false, downvoting is probably ok, especially when there's something else wrong with the comment. But high-quality, polite posts don't deserve penalizing just because you don't share their position. When you see one of those in negative territory, please be a good citizen and upvote it back to par. Users doing that is one of the community's self-correcting mechanisms, and it's more important now that we've made some downvotes more powerful.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7608102
I'm trying very hard to learn to upvote high-quality, informative and civil comments with which I very strongly disagree.
We try to come up with neat ideas, sadly this is not one we will achieve. We can send robots this way.
The earth is a space ship, the best space ship we'll ever get, we just take it for granted.
Some have also commented that we're like already as far out in space as we're ever going to get. There is probably a lot of truth to that.
OK...
> the best space ship we'll ever get
Huh? How do you know that?
That's your assertion. Billions of people have been porn into abject poverty and disease and without hope for better, have learned (and in many ways seen and experienced) much less than these space travelers would. Unless we're going the forced sterilization and eugenics kind of route, I'm not sure how it's consistent to impose your own morals and standards onto others' procreation.
I don't think this is relevant or a good counter argument, we could easily say that both scenarios are less than ideal? Being born into poverty at least means you might have options in life like, you might actually meet enough people to find someone who you actually want to procreate with? What's that going to look like being stuck in what is esentially a small shopping mall your whole life?
I'm not sure how it's consistent to impose your own morals and standards onto others' procreation.
Imposing morals? Trolling?
> Being born into poverty at least means you might have options in life like, you might actually meet enough people to find someone who you actually want to procreate with?
This can be true on a spaceship too.
I think it is. It's a pretty weak "argument" to begin with, more like just an assertion that it's wrong (because it's wrong).
> we could easily say that both scenarios are less than ideal? Being born into poverty at least means you might have options in life like, you might actually meet enough people to find someone who you actually want to procreate with? What's that going to look like being stuck in what is esentially a small shopping mall your whole life?
In terms of the number of people you would meet? Well it would look like almost everybody for the entire history of humanity.
> Imposing morals? Trolling?
I don't understand your question. Do you not believe that "they should have access to basic things such as to be able to experience the natural world" is imposing your own morals on the procreation of others?
People born without the effects of gravity will not develop the same. No form of alternative medicine will fix that.
Traveling through space means that piece of society needs to be consistent with maintenance and non stop. Humans are disorganized and function independently. Small groups function together. Humans are messy and keeping that space clean will be nearly impossible.
You would need a way to grow food and handle waste. Not even the best submarines have figured this out. Even with the ISS we have to send food up and take trash back.
We are not net zero enough to even make such a project possible.
I’m just pointing out that you seem to have just made up this idea that we shuttle trash from the ISS back to Earth and that’s wrong.