Possible way to travel through time via catapult orbit

[morgsboi]

This is a theory based on a theory. The theory it is based on is as you approach the speed of light, you will be traveling in time.

My theory is a way to approach that kind of speed. The way of doing so is to use the gravitational pull of Earth to to speed something up. So if we had a probe or space-ship orbiting around the Earth and the Moon in an irregular orbit, a kind of version like that would be what I call, a catapult orbit.

How this catapult orbit works is increasing the velocity by a certain percentage every full orbit. This happens by as the object in orbit, orbits around the Earth and Moon, it dips down further into the Earth in the stronger gravitational field. It would only dip at a slight angle to avoid it crashing down into the Earth. Now you might be thinking that it would actually take more velocity than gained, but remember its an irregular orbit so it would just simply slide out of the "circular orbit" and carry on, around the Moon and catapulting around the Earth again.

I have taken into consideration, the Moon's orbit and how it won't stay in the same place but the principal still works.

 

I'm no rocket scientist, so I don't know the mathematical formulas which means I can't prove it works but to help give an idea is a rough idea is a quick drawing I made on paint. (It isn't very good because it was hard to draw)

 

Red is the orbit of the Moon.

Green is a very rough idea of the irregular orbit. The dip at the left hand side of the Earth, is where the object in orbit slides out of the Earth's gravitational pull.

 

 

What do you think?

[Schrödinger's hat]

While a gravitational slingshot is a good way to gain some speed, returning to earth after sling-shotting around the moon is going to be quite difficult.

 

I don't know what you mean by irregular orbit, either. Once the object is a bit away from the moon (so earth's gravity is dominant), it will be travelling in something very close to an ellipse. Someone clever may be able to figure out a path that makes two, or even three passes -- gaining energy each time. Unfortunately at some point you're going to either circularize your orbit not able to get near earth again without inputting energy (possibly crashing into the moon), or reach escape velocity and never seeing earth again.

 

Secondly, traveling close to the speed of light won't make you travel through time in the Back to the Future sense, all it will do is make time pass at a different rate, so that when you return to earth you will be younger.

[morgsboi]

While a gravitational slingshot is a good way to gain some speed, returning to earth after sling-shotting around the moon is going to be quite difficult.

 

I don't know what you mean by irregular orbit, either. Once the object is a bit away from the moon (so earth's gravity is dominant), it will be travelling in something very close to an ellipse. Someone clever may be able to figure out a path that makes two, or even three passes -- gaining energy each time. Unfortunately at some point you're going to either circularize your orbit not able to get near earth again without inputting energy (possibly crashing into the moon), or reach escape velocity and never seeing earth again.

 

Secondly, traveling close to the speed of light won't make you travel through time in the Back to the Future sense, all it will do is make time pass at a different rate, so that when you return to earth you will be younger.

 

What I mean by irregular orbit is an orbit that is interrupted by a secondary source of motion such as an engine. So it would be controlled and as its so close to Earth it won't take much time to fix any problems.

And according to Prof. Stephen Hawking, approaching the speed of light will make time travel slower, so you won't get younger as that would just be reversing time in a way but you wouldn't age as quickly as people on Earth.

[A Tripolation]

What I mean by irregular orbit is an orbit that is interrupted by a secondary source of motion such as an engine. So it would be controlled and as its so close to Earth it won't take much time to fix any problems.

 

You would run into energy problems here. Altering your object that is orbiting at high speeds would make this method inefficient. Also, as Schrodinger's Hat pointed out, the gravitational slingshot can only be used three times (I actually thought it would only work once). This speed will not be near enough to the speed of light to help at all.

 

And according to Prof. Stephen Hawking, approaching the speed of light will make time travel slower, so you won't get younger as that would just be reversing time in a way but you wouldn't age as quickly as people on Earth.

 

Well, yes. This was established by Einstein in his Special Theory of Relativity. When you do a lorentz transformation, you will notice an effect called "time dilation". This is what Hawking meant. It isn't really traveling backwards in time at all. It simply means that time is passing slowly, much more slowly if you're around the speed of light, than it would be for other people who are in relative rest.

[Schrödinger's hat]

You would run into energy problems here. Altering your object that is orbiting at high speeds would make this method inefficient. Also, as Schrodinger's Hat pointed out, the gravitational slingshot can only be used three times (I actually thought it would only work once). This speed will not be near enough to the speed of light to help at all.

 

I'd be inclined to think it would only work once, too. But I don't know this for certain, I do know that the increased speed would make it much harder (and less useful energetically) each time so I put a rough upper bound of a small handful of times.