Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

Reactionless drives would be so nice.

Not only could you transport materials around, but you could make Venus spin in 24 hours in ~10^4 years using currenr Earth electricity output and a super-conducting emDrive -- I did the math a couple years ago.




Reactionless drives are indeed nice and really really dangerous - they make Earth shattering relativistic projectiles a bit too much easy to pull off.

Pair one such drive with a nuclear reactor and have it fly away from the sun for a while and then back - it will hit ludicrous speed on the way back, likely a good fraction of C. And there is hardly anything that can be done to prevent that as it needs just energy to gain speed, not bulky inefficient reaction mass.


There's really no substitute to mind-uploading when it comes to defense against kinetic stuff.


Yep - the ultimate solution fo many dangerous sitations - make the people in danger more robust or ideally effectively immportal. Solves a lot of issues & makes otherwise very complicated safety measures into much simpler ones.


There's really plenty of reaction mass around though. Could probably get it done quicker by having a few large drone ships that harvest reaction mass from the planet or nearby asteroids.




Join us for AI Startup School this June 16-17 in San Francisco!

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: