Monday 5 December 2011

Kimball Kinnison, call you service


Using nuclear bombs to propel spaceships?  That's 20th century thinking.  These days the question is why build dinky little spaceships when you can hurl entire star systems across intergalactic space?

Just don't show this to the Eddorians.

2 comments:

eon said...

Well, it is a more elegant solution to the problem than the Ringworld, in that you don't need to dismantle the planets to get the raw materials for a ring.

If it can accelerate (over time) to near-c velocities, it could also be an alternative explanation for two of the nagging questions in cosmology;

1. What are quasars?

2. If there are as many intelligent, advanced species in the galaxy as the Drake Equation postulates, why aren't they here already?

PS; The Eddorians managed to move their entire star system across several plenums to get to our universe from an utterly and horribly different dimension (see "Triplanetary"). My guess is they already know how to do this trick, but don't bother with it because it's too slow to suit them.

cheers

eon

Sergej said...

So are we planning to live on these things while they're in motion, or just push stars around to make them spell out rude phrases? Because that thing looks like any planets are going to get half a year when the sun isn't in the sky at all, followed by half a year of pavement-melting temperatures. Kind of like Minnesota, come to think of it.