Tuesday, May 17, 2016

[uchwrbck] Hitching a ride on Barnard's Star

If we can put a spacecraft in orbit around a star with unusually high velocity relative to the center of the galaxy, then it can travel long distances "for free", and have a long-lived source of power.  The time scale will still be at least millions of years, so it will have to be a very long lived spacecraft.

Need gravitational slingshots to insert into orbit, or else accelerating (and decelerating) will be just as difficult as achieving the high speed without a star.

Kapteyn's Star is heading away from us, so we would have independently achieve velocity fast enough to catch it.  This seems like a bad idea.  Barnard's Star is coming towards us.

Tagging along with a hypervelocity star allows exploring beyond the galaxy.

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