Could Pulleys Revolutionize Interstellar Travel?

[Alex Davy]

How did you find PF?

Searched up a question and it was one of the results

Hi, I'm just a kid so don't judge, but I had a weird thought when I read something about pulleys (don't ask) and I thought of something. In theory you could send spacecraft to your destination, before any human travel needed to happen, via autonomous spacecraft . These would act as the structures for a pulley (on a vast scale), or assemble a pulley. Instead of traditional chemical propulsion, the 'pulley' would act as a form of physical propulsion and pull new aircraft towards the end. This could mean that you could send multiple ships at a time, because of there being virtually no drag in space. The reason I believe that this could be revolutionary is that with enough time, it could theoretically be possible to complete interstellar travel on our current technological level to other stars. Additionally, as you probably know, the more pulleys and the better the arrangement of the pulleys, the easier things are to pull any direction (depending on perspective). I propose that this kind of system could be used with something pulling a a strong fibre from the solar system and the arrangement of pulleys resulting in the craft being pulled towards its destination.

I kind of wrote quite weirdly but I hope you people understand.

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Welcome to PF and we applaud your imagination but PF is a mainstream science education community so I'm afraid we can't give any feedback to your idea.

 

[ZapperZ]

How did you find PF?: Searched up a question and it was one of the results

Hi, I'm just a kid ...

Is that why you didn't understand the PF Rules that you had to agree to when you joined the forum?

Zz.

 

[Mark44]

Instead of traditional chemical propulsion, the 'pulley' would act as a form of physical propulsion and pull new aircraft towards the end. This could mean that you could send multiple ships at a time, because of there being virtually no drag in space.

This is eminently impractical on a number of levels. First off, the first ship would have to carry or drag an enormous amount of cable. Just to get to the moon, you would need about 240,000 miles of cable. If the cable weighed only one ounce per foot, which is probably very low, you would still need almost 40,000 tons of cable.
Second, the Earth and whichever planet or body is the destination are not stationary, relative to each other, so that the distance from here to there isn't constant. I'm not sure you have considered that.
Third, although there is no drag in space, you would still need to apply enough force to the cable to drag a payload out of the Earth's gravitational field, and would also need to apply another force once the payload got close to its destination. With only a "pull" cable, you wouldn't be able to decelerate the payload, although the payload might have a rocket on it that could perform this task.

The reason I believe that this could be revolutionary is that with enough time, it could theoretically be possible to complete interstellar travel on our current technological level to other stars.

The distance I quoted above is just the distance to the moon. The nearest star outside our solar system is Alpha Centauri, which is about 4.4 light years away, an impossibly long distance to span with a cable. I doubt there's enough steel, aluminum, or whatever on Earth to create such a cable.