The curvature of spacetime does wild shit to how you would expect physics to work. If you want to fall into a gravity well, you have to slow down or you’ll just slingshot past it.
Picture going for a very tight periapse in a highly elliptical orbit. Now make the periapse lower. Lower still, within the atmosphere or below the surface of the thing you’re trying to hit. If you don’t plan on arriving alive it’s much cheaper to arrive like a meteor
The curvature of spacetime does wild shit to how you would expect physics to work. If you want to fall into a gravity well, you have to slow down or you’ll just slingshot past it.
Picture going for a very tight periapse in a highly elliptical orbit. Now make the periapse lower. Lower still, within the atmosphere or below the surface of the thing you’re trying to hit. If you don’t plan on arriving alive it’s much cheaper to arrive like a meteor
This sounds an awful lot like the the idea that you can never actually catch up to anything because all you can ever do is close the distance by half.
This sounds an awful lot like the the idea that you can never actually catch up to anything because all you can ever do is close the distance by half.