Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit | duqee's commentslogin

When I see things like this, I always wonder how the gravitational force of these planets being so close to Earth would effect life on Earth.


Orbits "nearby" both gravity wells are unstable. Knowing that geostationary orbits are stable enough in the earth-moon system for commercial purposes, I think low earth orbit weather satellites would remain stable in a "small" change like Earth-Mercury. Someone with a lot more spare time on their hands will have to figure out at what point geostationary comsat orbits become unusably unstable. I have a gut feeling, not having run the numbers, that a Earth-Jupiter system might not even have stable low earth orbits for weather satellites, much less high orbit geosync for comsats.

If for example, Mars, eliminated stable enough comsat orbits, you could put transponders on the surface of Mars for Earth use. And vice versa, I guess.

I would imagine this would greatly complicate the design and operation of a usable space tether / elevator. With obvious exceptions like absolutely perfect tidal locking would mean its pretty easy to string a lightly tensioned rope from one planet to the other.

At some point I imagine even "launch loop" technology would get messed up gravitationally. Building a computer stabilized ultra small scale launch loop (like maybe 50 feet?) has always been an "in my infinite spare time" experiment idea. They're very stable under ideal conditions, the hard/fun part is all in the spinup/spindown and in perturbations and active oscillation dampening. You want a launch LOOP aka circle, not a launch LISSAJOUS.

There's more to life than just spacecraft, of course. But it is a kinda interesting topic.


I'm completely talking out of my ass, but I think Jupiter would also block out the sun. But even with that, Earth would still be a VERY hot place, right? All that pressure from Jupiter must create some heat (along with the increased volcanic activity), I'm guessing. Also, am I wrong to think that Jupiter has got to look bigger than that?

Macabre as it is, it's really fun to think about this stuff.



Serious tides. In practice, no Earth!

Moon produces a 1m high tide in the ocean (I recollect from years ago). Moon is 1/80 of Earth mass, Jupiter is 300+ Earth masses, so 24000x as high a gravitational pull....


Well, more than tides, it would produce probably-unsurvivable levels of volcanism.

The Roche limit of Jupiter is apparently 242,000 km (I think I'm using the right one, at scale Earth has no tensile strength), and the closest the Moon ever comes is 363,104, putting us barely outside of it, but Earth is still getting pretty roiled.

Oh, and to be clear, when I say "unsurvivable", I mean for life in general. Certainly we're not looking at anything like modern multicelluar life, we're looking at what we today call "extremophiles", if we're lucky. This puts us 60,000km closer to Jupiter than Io, and also the Jupiter system is quite full of radiation. I don't know if Earth's magnetic field could shield us, and I also don't know what Jupiter's tides would do to it.

Interesting note: A World out of Time by Larry Niven ends up with Earth in Jupiter orbit. However, it was orbiting much further out. The Jovian system isn't necessarily intrinsically hostile, it's just this puts Earth way too close to it.


I like the idea, but I could not even see the menu! I had this annoying video overlaying the menu: http://pbrd.co/Z60dPK It seems like it stuck in place.


I really like this product and would like to use it in the UK can pricing be set to GBP? Or is it just USD pricing?


As of now we are only indexing US prices - but we plan to expand out to the UK and Germany next. Drop me a note at varun <at> semantics3.com, I would love to chat with you!


Saw this as a funny meme a while ago, share it around. As for the need of a website with this on i'm not so sure its worth the domain cost to create this. Unless I am missing something.

I thought this would be some cool project that detected my headphone jack input and play some music or a error message if not detected.


Would this include viewing / reading .css files and .js files? As they are not exactly a public link.


Really love this design, it is eye candy, maybe not very user friendly for most. Reminds me a little of the new MySpace design. One thing I did notice about this design, you have not added any space for advertising space. We all know how much Facebook love to ply our feeds and right hand column full of sponsored ads these days. If this was seriously a option for Facebook (which i know is hypothetical) they would first look at how they can montenize from this design.


Voted for Fun and testing new technologies, but like someone mentioned before, it is the creative control of a project. Not ruining a perfectly functional and UI designed application or website and have a client have an opinion that changes the whole dynamic of how it works. Reminds me of the oatmeal comic about the client and the web designer.


I found the exact same issues as this.


Website was fine loading for me in Chrome.


I think these look great! good job, I don't think you will have many people not knowing a button is a button, if you added a 2px raduis on them you would look the same as gmail buttons and don't tell me people don't know they are buttons too?


Consider applying for YC's Summer 2026 batch! Applications are open till May 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: