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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 (52 children)

This isn't a ship-destroying weapon, this is a civilization-ender if not planet-killer.

You've got a projectile moving at a significant fraction of the speed of light. This is a relativistic weapon: it's going to hit harder than if it was a nuke.

[–] [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

@[email protected] So with something 4 times bigger than the Tsar Bomba we could get a bag of cat litter to 90% the speed of light?

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