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from the first,-assume-a-spherical-cow... dept.
https://m.phys.org/news/2019-03-black-holes-conquer-space-halo.html
A lot of hopes currently hinge on the use of directed energy and lightsails to push tiny spacecraft to relativistic speeds. But what if there was a way to make larger spacecraft fast enough to conduct interstellar voyages? According to Prof. David Kipping, the leader of Columbia University's Cool Worlds lab, future spacecraft could rely on a halo drive, which uses the gravitational force of a black hole to reach incredible speeds.
Prof. Kipping described this concept in a recent study that appeared online (the preprint is also available on the Cool Worlds website). In it, Kipping addressed one of the greatest challenges posed by space exploration, which is the sheer amount of time and energy it would take to send a spacecraft on a mission to explore beyond our solar system.
[...] "So the binary black hole is really a couple of giant mirrors circling around one another at potentially high velocity. The halo drive exploits this by bouncing photons off the "mirror" as the mirror approaches you, the photons bounce back, pushing you along, but also steal some of the energy from the black hole binary itself (think about how a ping pong ball thrown against a moving wall would come back faster). Using this setup, one can harvest the binary black hole energy for propulsion."
How to travel to, create, capture, and/or contain orbiting black hole binaries is left as an exercise for the reader.
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:06PM (2 children)
This idea of leaving your engine at home isn't a good idea. What happens if halfway into the mission funding is cut, or there's a revolution? The people cutting the funding don't have any investment in continuing the project, and if it's depending on photons echoing from a black hole there's going to be one hell of a lag time.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 16 2019, @08:11PM (1 child)
That's among the lesser risks you face.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 17 2019, @11:51PM
Sounds like the Halo Mary Drive.