Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
Spinning space station design
Is it cold in here?:
As long as conservation of momentum applies, you still have to push something in the opposite direction to go anywhere. It doesn't have to be something you carried on board if you have a solar sail, but there always has to be some form of propellant.
Akima:
--- Quote from: DSL on 08 Feb 2012, 08:36 ---Also (and I can't claim originality on this; someone with more letters after their name than I said it before I did) if you have artificial gravity control (powered by Unexplainium, not spinning) -- you HAVE your propulsion. No reaction motors or whatever "impulse drive" is, because you're already controlling acceleration.
--- End quote ---
Reactionless propulsion is popular in SF because it allows for spaceships that are not mostly fuel-tank, and that can land and take off without worrying about the rocket exhaust flame destroying Mos Eisley space-port. There are however gigantic problems with the idea in terms of our understanding of real physics all the way back to at least Gallileo, never mind Einstein. Most SF authors' handwaves amount to pushing your ship along with a gravitic pole pressed against some mysterious, infinitely massive, special reference frame: "I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of physicists suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened."
jwhouk:
"These are not the AnthroPC's you are looking for..."
DSL:
Stay on target. Stay on target. Stay on tarBLAM.
akronnick:
Imperial troops have entered the base! Imperial troops hav--krkrkkrkkrkrkkrrrkkkk
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