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nothing better than having a quiet night and doing nothing at all, what are you people up to?
2 years ago
@dimitrigorvachov Unfortunately it is only theoretical. I wish it were implementable though....
That friend and myself are trying to construct a hard-sci-fi universe for a computer game project, and our one break from reality is that a device exists that can move matter from A to B instantaneously. All other physical laws (conservation of energy/mass/momentum) are obeyed. · 2 years ago
@sdfgeoff and this is all speculation? as far as I know from my limited research, this device is currently only a theory · 2 years ago
But I can't find data on the gravitational potentiol energy difference between Sol and Alpha Centauri, and without that you risk pumping gigawatthours of energy into the translocation engine during the jump (aka massive explosion).
It is likely there are equal-energy contours, but the first jump would be extremely risky without extensive surveys. · 2 years ago
Assuming you can make the jump, the time to be there is instant, but you spend a couple minutes doing velocity matching manouvers.
Earth is moving at ~20km/s and through some fortunate circumstance, alpha centauri is 24km/s relative velocity.
Depending on the time of year, sometimes earth/centauri relative velocity will be large, sometimes small. At its smallest it will be ~15km/s (motion tangental to earths orbit).
At its largest it will be ~50km/s.
Departing from Earth you can use the translocation drive to make an intermediate jump to do a gravity-velocity-change manouver with an acceleration of 2.6km/s2
This velocity change therefore takes ~6-20 seconds. FYI thats about the same as a jupiter/saturn jump. · 2 years ago
@sdfgeoff how long would it take this metaphorical drive to get a person somewhere like alpha Centauri? Asking for a friend · 2 years ago
Last night I spent chatting with a friend about the limitations and use of a spacecraft 'translocation' drive - a 'jump' drive that requires conservation of energy and momentum.
It turns out to be quite fiddly to use, but if you have enough initial kinetic energy (eg were fired from a railgun at 100km/s), you can get anywhere in the solar system within a few days. We decided it would also suggest building a railgun-station in close-solar-orbit, and a rescue station in an highly elliptic orbit around jupiter.
Before that I was working on the firmware for a remote-controller I built around an ESP32. · 2 years ago
Right now I'm writing some tests for some code in sore need of them, previously I was reading a book on the Cynic philosophers of antiquity, specifically a translation of Lucian's "The Death of Peregrine"; which is a pretty strange tale that probably isn't entirely as-it-happened. · 2 years ago
At this moment in time? Procrastinating. Ten minutes ago, I finished wrestling with Home Assistant, which to be honest feels a bit black-boxy and abstraction-heavy, when all I want to do is switch a socket remotely. · 2 years ago