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from the fully-armed-and-operation-battle-station dept.
NASA's Brian Muirhead has speculated about the best way to construct a "Death Star" or other weaponized space station:
The best way to build a Death Star is to construct one out of an already-existing asteroid, says Brian Muirhead, chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "It could provide the metals," he says. "You have organic compounds, you have water—all the building blocks you would need to build your family Death Star."
And Muirhead knows a thing or two about asteroids. He's actually working on NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission, which will land on an asteroid, collect a piece, and then place it in orbit around the moon. A crewed mission will then go collect samples from that chunk while it's in orbit. (OK, so it's not quite building a Death Star, but it's still pretty cool.)
The Wired article includes a video.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 14 2015, @06:57PM
Can't fault your thinking, because that story has been written several times already. But, most authors envision a dark star, or at least a giant planet, to have enough gravity to pull a planet out of orbit, and send that planet out of the solar system. Cixin Liu put a new twist to the story here: http://www.amazon.com/Wandering-Earth-Short-Stories-Cixin-ebook/dp/B007JL6IYU/ref=pd_sim_351_3?ie=UTF8&dpID=51a%2BTuKt9AL&dpSrc=sims&preST=_UX300_PJku-sticker-v3%2CTopRight%2C0%2C-44_AC_UL160_SR113%2C160_&refRID=1E5KFH0FPMDBXMCW52VY [amazon.com]
(Score: 2) by Covalent on Monday December 14 2015, @07:34PM
Fascinating. I suppose an asteroid wouldn't have the mass to significantly perturb a large planet (for smallish values of "asteroid"). I guess the name Death STAR is somewhat more appropriate than I had previously considered.
So here's the follow-up question: Is it possible to PROPEL a "star" or supermassive planet like this? I mean, they're mostly gas...so how do you push them around?
And if we can't perturb a planet to its demise, then perhaps we must impact. Or, at least, perhaps we break off chunks of our "death asteroid" and bombard with those. A 1,000 mile wide asteroid could slough off a 10-mile-wide chunk that would pretty effectively decimate the life on a planet, and this could be repeated 100 times.
You can't rationally argue somebody out of a position they didn't rationally get into.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 14 2015, @07:44PM
Well, I'll mention Cixin Liu again - he's propelling the earth with thousands of fusion engines, anchored to the living rock of the earth's crust. I suppose it is within the realms of the scientifically possible, without considering what is economically possible, or politically possible.
I suspect that anti-gravity might provide an engine sufficient to propel planets and planetoids. Anti-matter engines might be more feasible. Fusion engines are probably the most viable option today.
"Give me a lever long enough, and I'll move the world" - or words to that effect. Mankind has not yet learned how to wield that lever, so I certainly can't answer the question. Given sufficient fuel resources, we have the engines available today to move some pretty massive bodies. Of course, our inefficient little rocket and/or ion engines aren't going to move them very fast!
Science is going to have to find answers, or we're going to be traveling quite slowly when we leave this planet!