It’s still not cheap enough, damn it! But this will certainly make it easier for us when we decide to send something out there.
[Lucille Ball] I wanna go to Mars![/LB]
Yes! Very cool. I’m still skeptical that it’s really that wonderful, though. I mean, you still have to give the oomph to get to escape velocity. I suspect that requires the greatest amount of fuel. Still, not having to worry as much about course corrections is quite a nifty thing, especially when it involves chaos theory.
I thought gravity was used to make spaceships go faster by swinging around a planet or another big piece of rock in space. Or do the movies/books I watch/read lie?
There’s what’s known as a “gravity assist” which allows a space ship to pick up speed from a planet. What the linked article is talking about is a course between the planets that let’s space ships avoid having to make course corrections or struggle against the gravity of an object on its way to something else.