The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligent Life

[Bofferbrauer2]

SvennoJ said:

Immersiveunreality said:

Mildly related to the bolded: I wonder if an object in space can have an so powerfull frequency that something can be pulled towards it in the same way as a magnetic pull.

I'm not sure what you mean by frequency attracting things?

Magnets can be used to launch ship. Instead of pulling, can you push with a powerful frequency?

Then you would need to move that magnet behind the ship to pull that off. Otherwise, if just doing it by one initial push, it would need so massive that the ship would simply break apart from the force.

Same reason why we can't just build a giant gun and shoot satellites into orbit; in fact the acceleration from that would be far gentler than being pushed by a magnet, having all the cannon's length to accelerate instead if an almost instantaneous push. The Space gun had been tried btw, but was deemed too impractical (it needed a 16 inches/41cm capital ship gun extended to a whooping 100 caliber length, meaning a 41m long barrel, just to give a shell suborbital flight - and still only reached on quarter of escape velocity) and thus the project was canned. Irak under Saddam tried it years later too, but that got destroyed in Desert Storm.

So the only practical way is to pull the ship along a magnetic rail, essentially turning the whole thing into a gigantic, curved Railgun or a Mass Driver. Would be pretty effective for launches from the Moon or other low gravity objects, but less so from earth as the rail would be unpractically large and high just to achieve LEO.

Last edited by Bofferbrauer2 - on 30 March 2019