
The Halo Drive
About this video
Astrophysicist David Kipping presents the halo drive, a proposed way to propel a starship to a good fraction of light speed by gaining energy from a black hole. The video is based on his peer-reviewed paper and explains why energy is the main obstacle to interstellar flight.
Why it appears in the archive
HN readers point to it as a clear explanation of a theoretical fuel-free propulsion concept from a channel they respect.
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From the Hacker News discussion
Prof. Kipping is well known for his Cool Worlds youtube channel, which is fantastic. He created a video on his Halo Drive idea: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗The halo drive concept is interesting. It uses a beam of light to extract gravity energy from a black hole and use to to maintain acceleration of your ship. Almost no fuel needed because its really just a kind of extreme gravity assist that we’ve been doing since what, the 1970s? [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗also, you can use light, instead of matter. Termed the "halo drive", it's a very nice theoretical concept: [VIDEO]
Read original comment ↗If you have the technology to reach the nearest binary blackhole ( "you just have to pay the one-time fee of the cost to reach the nearest binary black hole system" , at 16:12 min in this video: [VIDEO] ), you can most likely deal with the mirror/energy harvesting problem as well.
Read original comment ↗