View Single Post
Old 07-24-2002, 01:07 PM   #1
Undertoad
Radical Centrist
 
Join Date: Jan 2001
Location: Cottage of Prussia
Posts: 31,423
7/24/2002: Space highway



Voila the artist's rendering of the Interplanetary Superhighway. What is it really? It's a new use of something called "Lagrange points".

The Earth has a gravitational pull, constantly pulling things towards it. So does the moon and so does the sun. Lagrange points are places where all the gravitational forces are pulling at roughly the same level; if both the Sun and Earth are pulling, there's a point in space where both are pulling the same amount, so if you were there you would just sit there and not move. Or you could just move slightly into the force of gravity and propel yourself in a particular direction. Or you could just save fuel by only travelling in the areas where gravity is reduced by competing bodies.

The forces and the Lagrange points have been understood for a while now, but only recently have they come up with the idea of using the forces to help save fuel and move from point to point. If you were really good at it, you could use the points to manuever without fuel at all, but we're not that good at it yet. But scientists think that asteroids that have struck the earth have in fact used the superhighway (accidentally), including the asteroid that supposedly killed the dinosaurs.
Undertoad is offline   Reply With Quote