Will your blackhole starship self-destruct?

[TimeNot_0]

http://arxiv.org/abs/0908.1803v1

Are Black Hole Starships Possible?

People have already submitted this as an article to read about a stardrive theory.

http://io9.com/5391989/a-black-hole-engine-that-could-power-spaceships

No doubt it must be the layperson's version of this intricate engineering.

Perhaps, RMT will hop on it?

Perhaps someday it will also involve time, in the dimension of more time vs. space-time?
Perhaps more space than spacetime, whatever?

Interesting?
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Should comedy be used at all during this flight?

 

[Monkeybat]

So the ship is propelled by reflecting hawking radiation but what I dont get is how do you get the black hole moving its not like you can pull it along with a tow rope.

 

[Darby]

Are Black Hole Starships Possible?

As the paper speculates, sure - it's possible in principle. The 10 billion tons of fuel might be a bit of a problem considering the inertia to overcome, the absolute size of the ship, the size of the power supply and laser system and how to store all that"stuff". Turning on and turning off a black hole (Titor notwithstanding) is also a problem (they did reference that in the paper).

What the paper didn't address us Unruh Radiation. Space is not actually a vacuum, even if all that is normally there is a quantum foam of virtual particles. Speed up to any appreciable portion of the speed of light and viola! "Cold" space becomes very hot for massive bodies. Nudge up to just below the speed of light and the temperature nudges up to billions of degrees.