> At 05:39 AM 8/02/00 -0800, Spike re-wrote: >Doooh! 200 seconds, not 20!
>
> Damien Broderick wrote:That's still, what, 60 kps through the
> Earth-polar-tube? Faster than escape velocity. Wouldn't they run off and
> never be seen again? You know, like rip
> through the top of the graph paper. :)
It *does* escape earth gravity. But not the star. The stuff
counter-orbits in the same plane as the earthlike planet [ELP] but
opposite direction. And the tube isnt polar, it is equatorial.
Since Jeff Davis suggested an engineering flight of fancy [and
Jeff is one to think big] I did some single digit precision calcs
today using only memory and reasonable approximations,
to estimate the needs of his idea for cooling a planet. I used
earthlike numbers instead of Jupiter, because I know the
necessary parameters without having to look them up. {8-]
One needs a mass driver capable of launching material parallel
to the surface at a velocity of 60 km per second.
With just that, one would need only about a quarter of one
percent of the mass of the ELP to adjust the axis of rotation
so that the axis is parallel to the axis of orbit. Then another
fraction of a percent would be needed to round the orbit, to
say 1.5E8 km. Then I calculated it would take less than one
percent of the mass of the ELP to stop its rotation, or rather
slow it to one revolution per year, so that the tunnel always
faces the orbit direction. This would result in a tunnel thru
the equator about 600 km diameter. So assume away the
atmophere and oceans and imagine an ELP made of solid
material of arbitrary rigidity. The 600 km dia tunnel takes
out part of Guyianna, Venezuela and Brazil, going all the way
thru to pop out in Indonesia. Half the stuff that came out that
tunnel goes into counter-orbit, carrying away heat, as follows:
Half the mass would be launched the opposite direction
that the ELP was travelling around the sunlike star [SLS]
and the other half would be launched in the orbit direction
so that the forward launched matter would have escape
velocity from the SLS and would never be seen again,
whereas the matter launched the other way would form
a counterrotating ring, diameter equal to the orbit diameter
of the ELP, which would pass thru the tunnel in the ELP.
This is an engineering task that Ray Charles would agree
is difficult even if you *know* how to do it. spike
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:03:34 MDT