In Portal, using the portal gun to get to the moon is the obvious space travel usage, but I think people are overlooking how it'd let you trivially break the rocket equation. (digipres.club)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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In Portal, using the portal gun to get to the moon is the obvious space travel usage, but I think people are overlooking how it'd let you trivially break the rocket equation.

Hell, you could build a >1g torchship using nothing but the ocean.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

I'd do the math on how much thrust you'd get out of sticking one portal at the bottom of the Mariana Trench and the other in a ship, but I think it'd maybe be slightly tricky because you've got yourself an inertialess thruster right there, which is slightly illegal according to physics.

The Einstein cops are gonna show up and impound your spaceship

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

And that's just thinking about a static arrangement of portals. You could also use a dynamic arrangement where you use gravity to accelerate mass to arbitrarily high speeds and then fling it out the back

[-] [email protected] 1 points 8 months ago

@[email protected] That raises a question: Are portals subject to reaction forces? If not, a deflector would still be required and solid 'fuel' may be less usable.

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this post was submitted on 16 Jan 2024

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