It ’s a surprisal to many to get wind that Andy Griffith was not only the beloved , homespun sheriff of Mayberry , he was also a scientific discipline fiction space submarine sandwich .
In the 1979 made - for - television movie ( and subsequent brusk - lived serial ) , Salvage 1 , Griffith played Harry Broderick , owner of the Jettison Scrap and Salvage Co. His ambition is to recover equipment left on the moon follow the Apollomissions . He builds a starship he names the piranha — made entirely of recycled fighting , of line . It is fuel by a unique substance called monohydrazine .
And that ’s where Andy ’s secret ballad .
Everyone knows that escape speed is the velocity you require to be go in parliamentary procedure to break in complimentary from ground ’s solemnity . About 7 miles per moment , to be exact . Newton figured this out 400 years ago .
According to NASA , “ escape velocity is the speed demand for an object to bust aside from the gravitational pull of a major planet or moon and bequeath it without further propulsion . ” A spacecraft call for to be going 7 mi per endorsement , or most 25,000 miles per time of day , to leave the earth without falling back to the surface or falling into compass .
Or does it ?
A slightly more specific NASA definition say that “ The projection swiftness required to escape straightaway from the Earth ’s open is about 36,700 feet per secondment . If a fomite takes up unpowered flight ( close of rocket propulsion ) at an ALT of , say , 300 miles , it requires the somewhat lesser f number of 35,400 feet per indorsement to escape into interplanetary space . This reduction in required speed has , of course , been obtain at the expense of the vitality expended in sneak the vehicle to an elevation of 300 miles . ”
The key word is “ projection . ” Escape velocity really refer to the initial stop number an object indigence – that is , as if it were being shoot out of a cannon ( which was what Newton was thinking ) . A rocket acts almost as if it were tear from a cannon since it must expend its fuel in such a forgetful amount of time . This is because the slower it travel the more fuel it has to fire , and the more fuel it has to burn the more it has to carry ( gradation arugula were formulate to get around this job ) . get up to speed as quickly as potential is the most efficient affair to do .
But the last part of the NASA explanation yield a clue to what Andy discovered : if you have a fuel that contains so much DOE that it can provide a continuous thrust for a very foresightful clip , yet tally no more free weight to the Eruca sativa than ordinary fuel , you’re able to scarper into space at much miserable hurrying . In fact , with the ripe fuel ( albeit an entirely imaginary one ) , you could trip to the moon at a leisurely 50 Admiralty mile an hour . In fact , if you had a pavement long enough , you could take the air to the moon .
Traveling at escape speed is n’t in reality necessary , it ’s just energy - efficient . That ’s how Andy ’s Vulture worked : its fuel was just so press - packed with energy the Eruca vesicaria sativa could saunter to the moon at a leisurely rate . ( Admittedly , Leonard Wibberley ’s vino - powered moon rocket engine in The Mouse On the Moon , 1962 , anticipated this . )
While a pavement into quad probably is n’t virtual , that ’s basically what a space lift is . And a distance lift might be utterly pragmatic . By tying one end of a cable to the earth and the other to a geosynchronous satellite , a solar - powered lift car could travel to an orbital cavity 22,000 mi above the earth at any focal ratio it care .
AstrophysicsPhysicsScienceSpace
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