Amazing New Way to Travel Space
“There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. Its knack lies in learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss.” - The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Brilliant mathematician Edward Belbruno has recently devised the way to travel space. It’s called ‘ballistic capture’.
Our current method of driving spacecraft is by something called the ‘Hohmann Transfer’. All this is is simply a way to orbit all the way to your destination.
Because we can’t carry nearly enough fuel in order to travel in a straight line, we need to orbit around the Sun and manipulate our orbit so it naturally flies us to our destination.
We turn on our thrusters for a short period at specific places. This makes the shape of our orbit stretched out like an oval. You can stretch this oval so that the orbit would stretch right into the orbit of passing planets (presuming you’re looking to go to said planets).
The Hohmann Transfer requires something called a launch window. We need to wait until Earth’s orbit coincides closely with the orbit of where we’re trying to get. For Mars this happens every 26 months. For things farther out the space between launch windows is even larger.
While traveling this way, the spacecraft is going fast. If you don’t know already, all an orbit is is you flying forward so fast that the circular shape of the Earth curves down away from you faster than you fall towards it. By definition orbital velocities are violently fast. To reach a destination without flying right by it or crashing into it you have to slow down which means carrying a LOT of extra fuel all the way there.
Basically the Hohmann Transfer is expensive, dangerous and limiting.
The new technique’s actually has been around for awhile but it’s only been used to get spacecraft to the Moon. Edward Belruno’s solved the math involved to do it with Mars as well.
This is a mathematical miracle on par with the rocketeering wizardry of SpaceX.
Ballistic capture works like this:
You launch your spacecraft
You stretch the orbit so you’ll gently drift along your destination and the planet’s gravity will capture you as it catches up, turning your spacecraft into a satellite - no need to burn all that extra fuel at all.
With this new technique finally worked out we’ll be able to fly to Mars with a synchronized-precision. It’ll be like figure skaters gently moving towards each other side by side until they finally meet and hold hands while the entire universe spins around them.
Ballistic capture will be super efficient, cheap and we can launch pretty much whenever we want.
Edward Belruno, you are awesome. I love you. I love math. I love space.
Also, credit where it’s due: Boeing funded the research that led to this. Good on them. This is really amazing stuff.
(Gorgeous Mars art came from Alpha-Element)
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