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The Halo Drive

The Halo Drive on HackerTube: recommended by 3 Hacker News commenters across 3 separate months, 2019–2023.

Cool Worlds

explainer · evergreen

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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 Hacker News recommends it

HN readers point to it as a clear explanation of a theoretical fuel-free propulsion concept from a channel they respect.

people recommended it
3
separate months
3
strong recommendations
1
discussed on HN
2019–2023
“Prof. Kipping is well known for his Cool Worlds youtube channel, which is fantastic.”
— mperham, Jan 2023, in “The Halo Drive: Fuel-Free Relativistic Propulsion (2019)”

What HN commenters said

4 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

mperhamJan 2023Strongly recommends

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

in “The Halo Drive: Fuel-Free Relativistic Propulsion (2019)” · View on HN

chiiAug 2021Recommends

also, you can use light, instead of matter. Termed the "halo drive", it's a very nice theoretical concept: ▶ this video

in “A Dyson sphere around a black hole” · View on HN

jp555Jun 2019Recommends

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

in “Ways to travel at nearly the speed of light” · View on HN

_MicroftMar 2019Cites it

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.

in “Black Hole Propulsion as Technosignature” · View on HN

Topics & tags

Cosmology & astrophysicsSpace exploration & spaceflighthalo driveblack holesrelativistic travelspaceflightastrophysics