🚀 go-pugleaf

Newsgroups: sci.astro
Path: cs.ucf.edu!news
From: clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas Clarke)
Subject: Re: averting doom
Message-ID: <1992Dec30.194139.27331@cs.ucf.edu>
Sender: news@cs.ucf.edu (News system)
Organization: University of Central Florida
References: <1992Dec30.165411.25838@cs.ucf.edu>
Date: Wed, 30 Dec 1992 19:41:39 GMT

In article <1992Dec30.165411.25838@cs.ucf.edu> clarke@acme.ucf.edu (Thomas  
Clarke) writes:
> In article <JMC.92Dec29211051@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John  
> McCarthy) writes:
> > By the way, it seems to me that if the above idea is sound, it settles
> > the question of the stability of the solar system - in the negative.
> ... In the most recent Sci Am or Sky and Telescope 

It was Sky and Telescope Feb '93 ppp 13-14.
I remembered wrong.  A one millimeter perturbation of Mars' orbit
eventually caused a 500,000 kilometer difference in the position of
Pluto after 100 million years.

Gerald Sussman and Jack Wisdom used the Supercomputer Toolkit at MIT
to simulate the solar system.

>Hey, maybe Pluto would be better than Ceres.  Kick a periodic comet
>so it ricochets of Pluto.  Pluto Ricochets off Neptune, then off Jupiter
>and into the inner solar system where it becomes tame!

A further thought:  sprinkle carbon black on the right part of the
comet and its natural outgassing will be modified.  Done properely
in an orbit or two the comet will ricochet of Jupiter then into
Pluto and away we go.  
This is a mission we could fly now!! A few hundred pounds of carbon
black in a comet fly by!  I wonder is the MIT computer is up to
predicting comet outgassing :-)

--
Thomas Clarke
Institute for Simulation and Training, University of Central FL
12424 Research Parkway, Suite 300, Orlando, FL 32826
(407)658-5030, FAX: (407)658-5059, clarke@acme.ucf.edu