From: Party of Citizens (citizens@vcn.bc.ca)
Date: Thu May 22 2003 - 12:17:38 MDT
On Thu, 22 May 2003, Anders Sandberg wrote:
> On Wed, May 21, 2003 at 11:00:57AM -0700, Party of Citizens wrote:
> > Now that is foresight! Now that we've solved the all-important
> > ant-power problem, any guestimates as to how much rocket power it
> > would take to move Pluto out of orbit and take it for a spin?
>
> Pluto weights around 1.27e22 kg and has a velocity of 4.74 km/sec.
> So we need a comparable amount of kinetic energy to get it to move
> as we want. 0.5 mv^2 gives 1.43e27 J of energy. Since the
> expression "take it for a spin" assumes that it can be done in a
> short while, say an hour, we need 3.96e25 W of energy.
Thank you for the calculation. Can you put that in conventional rocket
terms for us laymen? Also, what about hollowing it out for living quarters
and catapulting the rocks into space for added thrust? Could that be done?
POC
> That is 2.65e28 antpowers. Assuming that an ant weighs 1e-5
> kilograms, the total weight of the ants needed to push Pluto is
> 2.65e23 kg - about 21 times the mass of the planet. Too bad, it
> would have made a wonderful sight to have an ant-powered mobile
> planet.
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension!
> asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
> GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
>
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