SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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, @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!