Spinlaunch... Can it succeed?

[DougSpindler]

Saving the species by traveling to space involves a coordinated effort tens of thousands of people an trillions of dollars.  Does anyone really think everyone on Earth or for that matter everyone in one country would work toward that goal?  In this time of COVID-19, people are refusing to get vaccinated and wearing a mask to save the species.   Like with polio, smallpox, rubella, tetanus, Ebola disease we know vaccinations and wearing masks have saved millions if nor billions of lives.

If we can’t get people to get vaccinated to prevent the spread of a deadly contagious diseases with a simple vaccination you sure aren’t going to get people to work together to build the infrastructure for the a space colony to. Save the species.  Think of the people trying to get in the lifeboats when the Titanic was sinking.  And then there is the question of who decides who will be allowed to survive.  In the course of history we have seen where one man or government decides who is allowed to live and die based on skin color, religion, intelligence or because they are in political opposition, race or religion.  History has shown we just can’t get along.  Who gets to play God and decide who is allowed to live? 

Take a look at the Christian Religion.  In the beginning there was just one God, one Jesus, one Bible and one Christian religion.  In just over 2,000 years there are over 50,000 Christian religions.  Point being with the Christian religion it started with one true God and religion and own we have 50,000.  And just so I’m not picking on Christians, look at the Mormon religion which I has been around for 201 years.  It was started by one man who was told by God what the true religion is.  In just 200 years there are over 100 different Mormon religions.

But lets say we are able to get everyone to build a space colony.  Who would you like to see living on it?  Elon Musk, Ted Bezos, Bernie Madoff, Bill Gates, Elizebeth Holmes, Ted Buddy.  Or what if we include people who have lived, Stalin, the Austrian corporeal, Khmer Rouge, and Mao Zedong.  We could let them fight it out in a battle of survival of the fittest.

Isn’t the more likely out come Earth will be destroyed and some of our DNA will get into space and some day land eventually landing on a different planet creating and the story of life will repeat itself.  Or what if we just retreat into one of the other parallel universe which exist with String Theory?  No need to create a space colony.

[fourfathom]

Saving the species by traveling to space involves a coordinated effort tens of thousands of people an trillions of dollars.  Does anyone really think everyone on Earth or for that matter everyone in one country would work toward that goal?

Nobody thinks that 100%, or even, 0.001%, of humanity could be saved.  If 100 years from now a planet-killer asteroid was heading for the earth, I doubt that we could get more than a few hundred people safely off the earth and even then unless we had some self-sustaining alternate home in space where would they go?

Instead, the goal would be to have self-sustaining colonies in our solar system, or some nearby system (this would require "generation ships").  If the Earth were then wiped out there would still be some humans living in the universe.  This is the "don't keep all your eggs in one basket" philosophy.  When our sun goes bang or kaput we will need those extra-solar colonies.  When the universe collapses or fades into heat-death we are still screwed, probably.

Impractical?  Sure, today it certainly is.  If we don't develop our space technology it will never be practical.  Is it desirable?  I leave that question to others.

[Nusa]

Saving the species by traveling to space involves a coordinated effort tens of thousands of people an trillions of dollars.  Does anyone really think everyone on Earth or for that matter everyone in one country would work toward that goal?  In this time of COVID-19, people are refusing to get vaccinated and wearing a mask to save the species.   Like with polio, smallpox, rubella, tetanus, Ebola disease we know vaccinations and wearing masks have saved millions if nor billions of lives.

If we can’t get people to get vaccinated to prevent the spread of a deadly contagious diseases with a simple vaccination you sure aren’t going to get people to work together to build the infrastructure for the a space colony to. Save the species.  Think of the people trying to get in the lifeboats when the Titanic was sinking.  And then there is the question of who decides who will be allowed to survive.  In the course of history we have seen where one man or government decides who is allowed to live and die based on skin color, religion, intelligence or because they are in political opposition, race or religion.  History has shown we just can’t get along.  Who gets to play God and decide who is allowed to live? 

Take a look at the Christian Religion.  In the beginning there was just one God, one Jesus, one Bible and one Christian religion.  In just over 2,000 years there are over 50,000 Christian religions.  Point being with the Christian religion it started with one true God and religion and own we have 50,000.  And just so I’m not picking on Christians, look at the Mormon religion which I has been around for 201 years.  It was started by one man who was told by God what the true religion is.  In just 200 years there are over 100 different Mormon religions.

But lets say we are able to get everyone to build a space colony.  Who would you like to see living on it?  Elon Musk, Ted Bezos, Bernie Madoff, Bill Gates, Elizebeth Holmes, Ted Buddy.  Or what if we include people who have lived, Stalin, the Austrian corporeal, Khmer Rouge, and Mao Zedong.  We could let them fight it out in a battle of survival of the fittest.

Isn’t the more likely out come Earth will be destroyed and some of our DNA will get into space and some day land eventually landing on a different planet creating and the story of life will repeat itself.  Or what if we just retreat into one of the other parallel universe which exist with String Theory?  No need to create a space colony.

I realize most of what you wrote is trolling in nature, whether you're doing it on purpose or not. But you're still talking apples and oranges. None of those maladys are extinction level events, damaging as they are. None of the religious commentary refers to extinction level events. None of the wars to date have been extinction level events, not even the ones that resulted in genocides. Lots of people dying are not extinction level events. Only when all the people have died or are unable to reproduce viable future generations has the species been killed.

[Rick Law]

We will have a long-stay space station with capability similar to Space 2001, someday.  Sooner the better.  Otherwise, the human species' destiny is extinction.

Space colonies, moon colonies, or Mars colonies will not save earth from extinction. They will all eventually die out without resources from earth.

True!  Even if we managed to travel out of our galaxy, we will likely never get out of our universe.  Heat death of the universe awaits us all.  The ultimate solution is to find ways to change the laws of physics.  (Values of physical constants being considered as part of the laws.)

Asteroid strikes remains our most immediate extinction level event, and mitigating this one could be within our reach in the relatively near future.

We should all be very glad that we live in the universe at this special time.    We arrived early enough to see other galaxies before they all receded beyond our visible horizon¹.  We arrived early enough to see our galaxy².  We arrived early enough to still "hear" the echos of big bang, so we have a chance to work that how the universe was made.  May be some of our understandings are wrong, but we arrived early enough to have a chance to correct some of them.

Imagine if we are intelligent creatures on a planet around a different star, arrived trillions of years after our sun was long gone...  Those creatures may look up the night sky and see mere darkness perhaps with a handful of faint dots of light.  They may hear the radio waves of the background, but too faint to be distinguished from anything else.  They would never see the wonders in the stars we see today, nor can they imagine they are in a universe at all.  They exist but just alone.

Count our blessings, enjoy the night sky, and imagine the wonders out there.  Mean time, let me start calling for help: "Hey, Q of Startrek TNG, where are you?  We need you."

Footnotes:
[1] But a lot of the visible galaxies we see today are already beyond our event horizon.  What happen there today will never reach us, and what happens here today will never each them.  They are already receding faster than the speed of light.  We are seeing old lights already en-route long ago.  No new lights from them will reach us.
[2] As far as I know, whether our galaxy has enough gravity to hold interior space from expansion is a still a debate.  So may be the galaxy will have enough mass to hold up against expansion.  I am still a fence sitter on this one but leaning toward expansion within.  I am waiting for further development with Modified Newtonian dynamics (MOND) and Quantum Relativity.  Those will change a lot of thinking in a lot of people.

EDIT:
Added "Asteroid strikes remains our most immediate extinction level event, and mitigating this one could be within our reach in the relatively near future."

[DougSpindler]

Asteroid strikes remains our most immediate extinction level event, and mitigating this one could be within our reach in the relatively near future.

Don't think so.  That would be war, famine, climate change and our ability not to get along with each other.  Right now 50% of the word is being feed thanks to artificial or synthetic fertilizer.  Thanks to the pandemic there is a shortage so famers are turning to natural fertilizers from cows.  This has led to a shortage of natural fertilizers.

[fourfathom]

Asteroid strikes remains our most immediate extinction level event, and mitigating this one could be within our reach in the relatively near future.

Don't think so.  That would be war, famine, climate change and our ability not to get along with each other.  Right now 50% of the word is being feed thanks to artificial or synthetic fertilizer.  Thanks to the pandemic there is a shortage so famers are turning to natural fertilizers from cows.  This has led to a shortage of natural fertilizers.

War, famine, etc, are not extinction-level events.  They may decimate the population, or possibly reduce it to a tiny fraction, but there will still be some humans left to carry on.  An asteroid has the potential to sterilize the entire globe.  None of these are good things.

[Rick Law]

First, fourfathom, thank you.  You said it better than I could.  Those other events (war, famine...) are not extinction level events.

This thread has ran it course sometime ago, but I like to correct a misconception prior to burying this dead horse.

Migrating people off planet is not the only way to save our species in an asteroid strike.  A better way is to avoid the strike.  Lucky for us, it is actually rather difficult for an asteroid to hit Earth.  Both the asteroid and the Earth have to be at that exact spot at that exact same time and that is hard.

Earth diameter is  12,700km and Earth orbits the sun at 30 km/s, that is, Earth moved by more than two Earth diameter every second! Earth moved it's diameter in just over 7 minutes.  Asteroids take decades or centuries to reach us and if we delay or advance the asteroid hit by merely 1/2 second 7 minutes, Earth is not there for the asteroid to hit when the asteroid got there.  The asteroid itself likely is traveling at least as fast as Earth, we can "add" the movement of the asteroid into the equation and that will give us a large leeway still.

Further more, asteroids come from afar.  Two straight lines originating from the same point and going in the same direction, with the second line a small angle off the first; the father you go, the bigger the separation between the lines.  Thus, small change in angle early will enlarged to become a big change after traveling a long distance.  This is another factor the will help us.  Small change early can have big effect on trajectory changing both the position of orbital intersection and the intersection time.

If we throw a rock in one direction, Newton's 3rd law: an equal force will push us in the opposite direction.  This little push changes the asteroid trajectory.  Trajectory change alters the intersection time and the location it will intersect with Earth orbit.  One rock is one small push, but we can do a lot of small pushes and let the small effects accumulate.  This is a way some astrophysicist proposed we can use to avoid collision.   Throwing rocks and throwing lots of them is where spinlaunch, or sling launch, or rail launch can come into play.

Asteroids likely has some ice or other frozen gases.  There adds another way: heat the gas to and vent the gas-stream to push the Asteroids like a rocket's gas-stream pushes the rocket.

Granted, moving a team of engineers to an asteroid to build nuclear power plant(s), melt frozen gases, implement an array of auto rock throwers, and do that while the asteroid is still far enough away is not an easy task and it will cost trillions.  Being trillions poorer still beats extinction.

EDIT:
Correction made.  I misread a comma as decimal.  Earth diameter is 12,700 kilometer, not 12.700 kilometer.  So I did the mental math and arrived to the wrong 1/2 second number.  It should be about 7 minutes.  And we will need a lock more rocks, but method still works, in theory.  Thanks to AVGresponding for pointing it out, I appreciated it.

[DougSpindler]

An asteroid hitting the Earth didn’t exactly wipe out all of the dinosaurs.  When the next one hits if “we” are still around we should might be a lucky.

[fourfathom]

Migrating people off planet is not the only way to save our species in an asteroid strike.  A better way is to avoid the strike.

A few years ago I was on the SETI Institute board of directors, and saw a very interesting presentation my astronaut Ed Lu (and others) about possible methods for deflecting asteroids that would otherwise impact the Earth.  Yes, lots of ways to do it, and we aren't ready to use any of them.  We should work on this.

An asteroid hitting the Earth didn’t exactly wipe out all of the dinosaurs.  When the next one hits if “we” are still around we should might be a lucky.

Or we might not be so lucky.  That dino-killer wasn't actually all that large as asteroids go.  There are some in nearly-intersecting orbits that would definitely sterilize the planet, and who knows what's out there in deep space, heading our way?  The odds are small, but the timeframe is long.  Hell, a current theory of the formation of our Moon is that it happened when Mars-sized body collided with the Earth.  Our Solar System has settled down since then, but you never know.

[DougSpindler]

I think the evidence is very strong the moon was created due to a collision with the Earth.  And that the moon is a piece of early Earth.  This was found with the moon rock samples.

[EEVblog]

I love how spinlaunch is so boring the thread has turned in to an earth destruction debate 

[AVGresponding]

First, fourfathom, thank you.  You said it better than I could.  Those other events (war, famine...) are not extinction level events.

This thread has ran it course sometime ago, but I like to correct a misconception prior to burying this dead horse.

Migrating people off planet is not the only way to save our species in an asteroid strike.  A better way is to avoid the strike.  Lucky for us, it is actually rather difficult for an asteroid to hit Earth.  Both the asteroid and the Earth have to be at that exact spot at that exact same time and that is hard.

Earth diameter is  12.7km and Earth orbits the sun at 30 km/s, that is, Earth moved by more than two Earth diameter every second!   Asteroids take decades or centuries to reach us and if we delay or advance the asteroid hit by merely 1/2 second, Earth is not there for the asteroid to hit when the asteroid got there.  The asteroid itself likely is traveling at least as fast as Earth, we can "add" the movement of the asteroid into the equation and that will give us a large leeway still.

Further more, asteroids come from afar.  Two straight lines originating from the same point and going in the same direction, with the second line a small angle off the first; the father you go, the bigger the separation between the lines.  Thus, small change in angle early will enlarged to become a big change after traveling a long distance.  This is another factor the will help us.  Small change early can have big effect on trajectory changing both the position of orbital intersection and the intersection time.

If we throw a rock in one direction, Newton's 3rd law: an equal force will push us in the opposite direction.  This little push changes the asteroid trajectory.  Trajectory change alters the intersection time and the location it will intersect with Earth orbit.  One rock is one small push, but we can do a lot of small pushes and let the small effects accumulate.  This is a way some astrophysicist proposed we can use to avoid collision.   Throwing rocks and throwing lots of them is where spinlaunch, or sling launch, or rail launch can come into play.

Asteroids likely has some ice or other frozen gases.  There adds another way: heat the gas to and vent the gas-stream to push the Asteroids like a rocket's gas-stream pushes the rocket.

Granted, moving a team of engineers to an asteroid to build nuclear power plant(s), melt frozen gases, implement an array of auto rock throwers, and do that while the asteroid is still far enough away is not an easy task and it will cost trillions.  Being trillions poorer still beats extinction.

It's worth proof-reading your post before posting it...

If the diameter of the Earth was 12.7km, its surface area would be around 507km². Good luck fitting 8 billion people into an area 1/3 the size of Greater London...

The diameter of the Earth is 12.7Mm, or 12,742km. Rather than moving through its own diameter twice a second, it takes 7 minutes or so to move one diameter...

[mfro]

... besides that, the post appeared to suggest a faster moving earth would reduce the likelihood of a hit.

The opposite is true.

If the trajectory of the asteroid crosses earth orbit at a certain point, the likelihood of a hit is actually increased with a faster moving earth since it's more often at that certain spot during a certain time frame than it would when moving slower.

Glad he missed the speed of earth by a magnitude (although the tiny earth he reckoned with would be a lot harder to hit)...

[fourfathom]

... besides that, the post appeared to suggest a faster moving earth would reduce the likelihood of a hit.

The opposite is true.

If the trajectory of the asteroid crosses earth orbit at a certain point, the likelihood of a hit is actually increased with a faster moving earth since it's more often at that certain spot during a certain time frame than it would when moving slower.

I should think about this more before posting, but anyway, I don't think the speed of the Earth orbit makes a difference one way or another when considering the odds of a random collision.  A faster Earth (and it's gravity "capture field")  passes through a collision zone more often, but as it passes a slower Earth stays in the zone longer.  I think it ends up being the same.

But a faster earth makes it easier to change a known collision trajectory to a miss by deflecting the asteroid.

[DougSpindler]

... besides that, the post appeared to suggest a faster moving earth would reduce the likelihood of a hit.

The opposite is true.

If the trajectory of the asteroid crosses earth orbit at a certain point, the likelihood of a hit is actually increased with a faster moving earth since it's more often at that certain spot during a certain time frame than it would when moving slower.

I should think about this more before posting, but anyway, I don't think the speed of the Earth orbit makes a difference one way or another when considering the odds of a random collision.  A faster Earth (and it's gravity "capture field")  passes through a collision zone more often, but as it passes a slower Earth stays in the zone longer.  I think it ends up being the same.

But a faster earth makes it easier to change a known collision trajectory to a miss by deflecting the asteroid.

No, don't you remember you laws of physics for KE?  It's that v term when increased can be a real killer.

[DougSpindler]

I love how spinlaunch is so boring the thread has turned in to an earth destruction debate 

We have reached the point in Godwin's law where the discussion will involve a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler.

[fourfathom]

... besides that, the post appeared to suggest a faster moving earth would reduce the likelihood of a hit.

The opposite is true.

If the trajectory of the asteroid crosses earth orbit at a certain point, the likelihood of a hit is actually increased with a faster moving earth since it's more often at that certain spot during a certain time frame than it would when moving slower.

I should think about this more before posting, but anyway, I don't think the speed of the Earth orbit makes a difference one way or another when considering the odds of a random collision.  A faster Earth (and it's gravity "capture field")  passes through a collision zone more often, but as it passes a slower Earth stays in the zone longer.  I think it ends up being the same.

But a faster earth makes it easier to change a known collision trajectory to a miss by deflecting the asteroid.

No, don't you remember you laws of physics for KE?  It's that v term when increased can be a real killer.

OK, but you're changing the subject, which was the probability of collision, not the energy of an impact.

It has been suggested that a spinlaunch could be bolted to an asteroid to throw rocks, so there's that...

So far this has been a 100% Nazi-free discussion.  I think we can keep it that way, as long as we don't put any spinlaunches on the far side of the moon. 

[PlainName]

No, don't you remember you laws of physics for KE?  It's that v term when increased can be a real killer.

The killer asteroid could be approaching from any direction, so Earth's velocity relative to the Sun (and its orbit) is pretty irrelevant. In fact, if the asteroid is coming in on the same plane as the Earth's orbit, the impact would be less because the relatives speeds would be lower than they would be with a slower-orbiting Earth.

[Domagoj T]

I don't think the speed of the Earth orbit makes a difference one way or another when considering the odds of a random collision.  A faster Earth (and it's gravity "capture field")  passes through a collision zone more often, but as it passes a slower Earth stays in the zone longer.  I think it ends up being the same.

Nope, faster Earth sweeps through more volume per time than a slower Earth.
Just imagine the edge case where Earth makes an instantaneous round trip around the Sun. Anything that crosses the Earth's orbit is guaranteed to collide.

[AVGresponding]

I don't think the speed of the Earth orbit makes a difference one way or another when considering the odds of a random collision.  A faster Earth (and it's gravity "capture field")  passes through a collision zone more often, but as it passes a slower Earth stays in the zone longer.  I think it ends up being the same.

Nope, faster Earth sweeps through more volume per time than a slower Earth.
Just imagine the edge case where Earth makes an instantaneous round trip around the Sun. Anything that crosses the Earth's orbit is guaranteed to collide.

Exactly, a relatively basic principle that I'm surprised wasn't more obvious to everyone!

[DougSpindler]

So far this has been a 100% Nazi-free discussion.  I think we can keep it that way, as long as we don't put any spinlaunches on the far side of the moon.

Not quite, someone has already mentioned the V-3 or Vergeltungswaffe.
The last guy who built a Vergeltungswaffe, Gerald Bull, was killed.  Conspiracy is the illuminate which are really aliens didn't want it built?  Or he was assassinated by the Israelis.  Apply Occam's razor for the answer.

[fourfathom]

Nope, faster Earth sweeps through more volume per time than a slower Earth.

Just like the rain on a car windshield.  (I did say I should have thought about it more before posting.)

[Rick Law]

...
Earth diameter is  12.7km and Earth orbits the sun at 30 km/s, that is, Earth moved by more than two Earth diameter every second!   Asteroids take decades or centuries to reach us and if we delay or advance the asteroid hit by merely 1/2 second, Earth is not there for the asteroid to hit when the asteroid got there.  The asteroid itself likely is traveling at least as fast as Earth, we can "add" the movement of the asteroid into the equation and that will give us a large leeway still.
...

It's worth proof-reading your post before posting it...

If the diameter of the Earth was 12.7km, its surface area would be around 507km². Good luck fitting 8 billion people into an area 1/3 the size of Greater London...

The diameter of the Earth is 12.7Mm, or 12,742km. Rather than moving through its own diameter twice a second, it takes 7 minutes or so to move one diameter...

Yeah, I did missed read the comma as a decimal when I search for the earth diameter!!  (Or mistyped into the post, then did my mental math using 1000x off number)  I should really wear my reading glasses more often, but then I know the more I wear it, the more I need it.  More so, my gut sense should have been better, the number is too small.  Thanks for pointing it out.  I'll go back and correct that.  (Update, dead horse exhumed and corrections were made.)

That said, we need a lot more rocks, but method still works, in theory.

[DougSpindler]

Nope, faster Earth sweeps through more volume per time than a slower Earth.

Just like the rain on a car windshield.  (I did say I should have thought about it more before posting.)

Posting your thoughts allows for error correction and so everyone can learn.

[Rick Law]

... besides that, the post appeared to suggest a faster moving earth would reduce the likelihood of a hit.

The opposite is true.

If the trajectory of the asteroid crosses earth orbit at a certain point, the likelihood of a hit is actually increased with a faster moving earth since it's more often at that certain spot during a certain time frame than it would when moving slower.

Glad he missed the speed of earth by a magnitude (although the tiny earth he reckoned with would be a lot harder to hit)...

I agree with you that if the earth move faster, over a long time, it will be at that "right position" more often thus increasing the probability of collision if it is over a long period of time.

But we are talking about an asteroid that will collide with earth (probably=1) if nothing is done.  So probability of hit is not in question here.  We are merely nudging the asteroid a bit to advance/delay the exact time that the asteroid crosses the earth orbit, so at the time it arrives the Earth is not there.  The shorter the time it takes for earth to move out of the way, the less we have to nudge.

Of course intersection time is not the only thing we are changing when nudging the asteroid, we will also be modifying the position of intersection, and that helps also.  So between modifying the time and the position, the result we want is when the asteroid intersect with earth orbit, the earth is not there to hit.