Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

What's the smallest my planet mover can be?

+0
−0

Some sufficiently advanced species has decided they will move planets.

Let's assume earth-like, life sustaining worlds. The only real way to do this as far as I know is using "gravity tugs" or messing with orbital trajectories (slingshot), again using gravity.

They want this done in a reasonable amount of time (not millennia).

So they build a ship, with the front being a giant ball of something sufficiently massive (and super dense to save space) to have the required gravity. So how small can we make a ship massive enough to move worlds?

You can address the feasibility, rarity of material, speeds and times, all you want but the Question at hand here is the size of the ship. I don't have any real specifics to share here. the galaxy is huge and they might want all kinds of planets from all over the place. Don't break the planet and get it there within the next thousand years or so is all that really matters.

Ideally the gravity of the ship is enough to select a planet to move without disrupting the entire solar system, so not as massive as a star obviously.

History
Why does this post require moderator attention?
You might want to add some details to your flag.
Why should this post be closed?

This post was sourced from https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/q/98450. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

0 comment threads

0 answers

Sign up to answer this question »