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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. (digipres.club)

submitted 9 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 9 months ago (49 children)

You can also make it bigger by not using a roughly round rock and instead using a long rod of the densest material you can get your hand on.

But mass you pay for, speed you don't.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (48 children)

Like, the worked example from Atomic Rockets has 7 kilograms of cat litter moving at 90% of lightspeed hitting a stationary target with 195 megatons of kinetic energy.

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacegunexotic.php

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (45 children)

But yeah this is the ultimate doomsday weapon. You can accelerate indefinitely for free, you just have to wait.
(and if you can put your portals in orbit of a more massive object, you get faster acceleration than 1g)

So you don't need more than a portal gun, a tungsten rod, and some time to blow the atmosphere off a planet.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

@[email protected] how do you make sure it's aligned right? It's no good if it drifts to the side and hits the edge of the portal, maybe already at a dangerous speed, at your weapon site rather than your target

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