Cool Worlds
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 4 months, 2019–2023
17:34 · 526K views · Mar 1, 2019
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.
HN readers point to it as a clear explanation of a theoretical fuel-free propulsion concept from a channel they respect.
4 comments from Hacker News
Prof. Kipping is well known for his Cool Worlds youtube channel, which is fantastic. He created a video on his Halo Drive idea: this video
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? this video
also, you can use light, instead of matter. Termed the "halo drive", it's a very nice theoretical concept: this video
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: this video ), you can most likely deal with the mirror/energy harvesting problem as well.