SlyCoopersButt
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I think using a vessel for a planet is your only option. But it can't be landed on or orbited though.
Even though no engine could be used for it, Would de-orbiting Jupiter into the sun perhaps add a few extra thousand years to of cool time down here? Jupiter has lots of hydrogen. My best guess would be to use millions or even billions of Anti-matter bombs for de-orbiting it. Might be safer than moving Earth.
Ok, since almost everyone is saying no to this, I have a new question, is it possible to do this with a DLL?
More likely, if you de-orbited jupiter into the sun, you would cause a massive, if short-lived, flare-up that would obliterate all life on Earth. Assuming that we de-orbit jupiter quickly (i.e. we stop it in its orbit and it falls straight into the sun) and ignoring the energy release required to perform the de-orbit burn, which is likely substantial, we find that by the time it touches the surface of the sun, it has acquired a velocity such that its kinetic energy is equal to the gravitational potential energy difference between its own orbit and the surface of the sun. Gravitational potential energy, U, is defined by the equation U=-G*((m1*m2)/R). For the sun and jupiter, m1 is the mass of the sun and m2 is the mass of jupiter. Since we're finding the energy released by falling from Jupiter's orbit to the solar surface, we run the equation twice, once with R=radius of Jupiter's orbit, and once with R=radius of the sun. We then take the difference between the two. The first time we get U=-3.2367*10^35 joules, the second time we get U=-3.6232*10^38 joules. The difference is 3.6200*10^38 joules, or 8 trillion megatons. Divide that by the mass of Jupiter and we get the energy per kilogram, 190,657 megajoules/kg (one megajoule/kg is equal to 1 km^2/s^2). The energy per kilogram is the square of Jupiter's velocity at the end of its fall, so sqrt(190,657 km^2/s^2) = 436.64 km/s. So you have Jupiter smashing into the sun at over 400 km/s. Since Jupiter is about the same density as the sun, it probably won't go straight through. Rather, it will stop, probably fairly quickly, and all of that 3.62*10^38 joules will be released as heat. It will probably stop before it reaches the center, but I don't know exactly how far in will go, so I'll be conservative and say it stops at the exact center of the sun. So it will decelerate from 436 km/s to zero over a distance of one solar radius. Assuming this acceleration is uniform, the average velocity will be 218 km/s. Thus it will take 3190 seconds, or 53 minutes and ten seconds to reach the center. The average power released over this time period will be the energy released over the time, or 3.62*10^38 joules / 3190 seconds, which comes out to 1.13 * 10^35 Watts, or 335 million solar luminosities. Now, a fair portion of this energy would end up trapped fairly deep within the sun and would be delayed in its release, so the observed brightening would be less, but we would definitely observe the Sun to brighten by a factor of at least a few thousand for a short time. This would not create friendly conditions for life on Earth.
EDIT: Oops. v= sqrt(2*kinetic energy/m), so velocity is 616 km/s. Average velocity over the deceleration period after hitting the Sun is 308 km/s. Time to decelerate is 37.6 minutes, or 2,255.67 seconds. Power is 474 million solar luminosities.
My brain just shut down.
To add even more fun to the scenario, the gravitational effect of having Jupiter suddenly plunge into the sun would be to play cosmic billiards with the other planets in the solar system.
Presuming you achieved this bullying of Jupiter by enacting some sort of force field that suddenly nullified its gravity and inertia (zapping it out of the universe momentarily?) This by itself will make the sun "snap" in its orbit from the suddenly gone gravitational influence Jove had on it. Its too late/early for me to even contemplate the math, but this shock would probably be enough to disrupt the sun's internal fusion system, and either cause it "go out" (core disruption) or explode (expell its outer layer).
If you made your own planet, it may be possible to have the ephemerides dynamically change in response to some event, eg. a vessel on the surface with its engines on.
It would not be possible to write a DLL that would move the existing planets. If you wanted to, say, move the Earth, you would need to replace the existing Earth dll with a new custom one.
Hi there! I was wondering, is it possible to move planets in orbiter with HUGE and powerful rocket engine at the back of the planet? For example, a ship 1/3 of the size of the Earth, pointing downward at the Earth, and has a thrust setting of 10e100000. Is it possible to do something like that in orbiter?
Speaking of moving planets (and related).... what about the moon? From what I recall hearing, it's actually going away. Slowly of course, but fast enough to be measured, which I would call a concern.
Hielor,
I'd be very interested in doing this to make a movable asteroid. The problem I found when last I looked at it was, there's no timestep function in a planet's .dll, so I was unable to conceive of a way to describe the orbit based on arbitrary events in the future.
Am I wrong? Is this possible? I'd really like to do that.
I had thought about that. Much like stoking a fire. like if you throw fuel into a fireplace. I expect it would be significant. So much for that being a safer alternative!
You can't do it in Orbiter and you can't do it in reality with any planet that has at least some amount of atmosphere...
Even if you point a huge rocket down and fire it.... even if it's an incredibly powerful ion engine with the nozzle velocity of ~50 km/s, the particles won't make it through the atmosphere. They'd be slowed down by the atmosphere and stay on the planet. And the law of conservation of momentum dictates that you cannot move a body's center of mass without "throwing" something off you or "being hit" by something.