Posted on 08/26/2016 6:27:49 AM PDT by C19fan
It is faster than your average train - and could ferry humans and material to Mars in a matter of hours. The stunning Solar Express is described as 'a space train', and would travel a neverending high speed route, meaning it never slows. 'It would run non-stop, so smaller vessels would need to catch the train when it passed by,' its creators say.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
At least you get a free bus trip to Holiday Inn Express.
The pressure in the interior of the sun is strong enough to fuse hydrogen into helium. There is no possible structure that could withstand such pressure.
This ‘train’ does not slow down to pick up passengers. In order to match speeds to catch up with the train, you are already goi g fast enough to go to your Mars destination without the train and as g forces need to be in the 1 g range (except for short periods) it would take more than the 37 hours to safely attain such speeds.
Perhaps a long bungee cord to slowly bring one up to speed. Now we are in the realm of road runner and coyote.
You're right, of course; I was aiming at humor. In any case, I would think that it would make more sense to use the sun's gravitation as a whip, so that at 3000 km/s one could not only get around the sun in a few hours, but also be far enough away to handle the sun's heat and its other radiations.
The hype didn’t fool FR readers. They understood the acceleration/ deceleration problem right away.
“sans forced evolved spice addicted navigators folding space”
Where is the fun in that?!?
Doesn’t need a heat shield - just schedule the trans-solar passages at night.
This concept actually isn’t bad, but would be much more feasible to put something like this in permanent translunar orbit. Mars and Earth have no simple orbital resonance, so you would be aiming at a constantly moving target, whereas with the moon, you can put it in one orbit and then only use fuel to maintain that orbit.
Then, we would only need to launch things into earth orbit, they could rendevouz with the “train” there, and hop off at the moon, where they need very little fuel to descend to the surface.
I think I have my next project for Kerbal space program :D
I’m thinking that it would be simpler to just go at night. :=)
Yeah, escape velocity from earth orbit is only 11 kps, so that would be quite an additional burn to get to 3000 kps.
“There is no possible structure that could withstand such pressure.”
Well, you only say that because you haven’t discovered transparent aluminum yet :P
The real point is that, if you have to first accelerate to 3,000 km/s - i.e., if you are able to first accelerate to the cruising speed - you don't even need to "hook up" with the space train: Just continue cruising at 3,000 km/s in the frictionless vacuum of space.
Until shortly before you reach your destination, in which case you will have to deccelerate anyway.
Regards,
“The real point is that, if you have to first accelerate to 3,000 km/s - i.e., if you are able to first accelerate to the cruising speed”
Exactly!
If you can already get ‘cars’ up to that speed and decelerate them... why link them to a train ever? Just fly around in the cars and call it a day.
3000 km/sec is 100 times the speed of the Earth orbiting the Sun.
Such a craft would not go to Mars; it would depart the Solar System for intergalactic space in short order.
Escape velocity from the sun at the earth’s orbit is 44 km/sec. An object traveling at 3000 km/sec would escape the solar system (and the Milky Way) and never be seen again. The whole concept is idiotic.
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