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This is going to kill all life on Earth isn't it?

I don't recall any ants in that novella either!

How big would they have to be, Mr YT show maker.

In order for it to work you would need to accelerate the planet at more than 1g. That might have some umm... unfortunate side effects.

I think you’d have to tie the spacecraft to the moon to make sure that the Earth’s gravity doesn’t keep it in place. But what do I know? I’m not a rocket scientist 🤷🏻‍♂️

Genius

And since it's a spacecraft, it's basically just the slingshot airplanes: space edition.

"Dammit, finally somebody figured out how to make the rocket equation work in our favor."

Spaceship cannon

Spaceship trebuchet

Everyone, and I do mean everyone, put your seatbelts on

Can confirm this works

That might be just craze enough to work... might...

What could possibly go wrong?

His launchpad looks like he already did it.

According to that frame of reference thing it’s « technically correct »

Make sense to me

Two questions. How much impulse force would the engines need to generate to move the entire earth away from the spacecraft quickly enough that the Earth's gravity doesn't hold the craft to the surface? How reinforced would the launch pad need to be for the engines to not just punch through the earth

did chuck norris have this idea ? 😆

True

That will never work. Use the engines to shoot the craft into space like a cannon ball

This may be one of my favorite comics ever—this is brilliant.

they made a dystopian movie about this

Of course anything not tied down within 10s of miles of the launch will escape Earth's gravity. With things further and further out ending up in successively lower orbits. Luckily nobody will complain given the huge quantity of heat entering the atmosphere raising the temperature several degrees.

This makes me wonder how much thrust it would actually take to do this... alas, I don't think I'm smart enough to fugure it out, as I'm guessing it's more complicated than the other way around.

Probably more stable to move the spaceship to the equator and speed up the rotation of the earth so that a day becomes 1 hour and 24 minutes.

this was how they accidentally fixed climate change on Frisky Dingo

It's the Frisky Dingo Annihilatrix!

I mean, it will work in a 1000 years www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RtM...

I believe that is the only option for Musk, as his rocket can reach geostationary orbit with either engines or payload, but not both...

In crayon, right?

Clever!

this Idea would never work. Putting the Space Craft in the middle of those 2 giant thruster the moment the space craft rises high enough it will be incinerated by the thruster exhaust I thought they're suppose to be rocket scientist 🤓

As an added bonus, everybody on the engine side of the Earth get to go to space too!

Why would you convert your planet into a spaceship? -Because it's cool.

Laser launch, basically.

What if? What if we actually did that

And that force isnt the actual thrust you'd want out of the rocket itself, its the thrust *after accounting for earth's escape velocity* of 28,000mph that would otherwise pull the exhaust gases back to earth and lead to net zero thrust.

Yes, you'd just need 100 quintillion tons of antimatter being annihilated per second to achieve that if you used pure photons to get the most thrust per pound.

Then maybe. But if success, then many things go to space that should not go to space outside of spaceship. So please do not.

I'm afraid that won't work either, it would just turn back time like in Superman :(

You could potentially create enough push from the exhaust to move the rocket, but accelerating Earth beyond escape velocity is not practically possible, by a wide margin.

If we make the acceleration the same for Earth as it would be for the rocket, I’m fairly certain we’d get roughly the same outcome. We’d need in the order of 10^18 to 10^21 times as much force, depending on the rocket, to gain the same acceleration. There is 5.5•10^14 kg of biomass. Impossible.

The mass of the spaceship being so small, escaping the gravity well should need little speed 🤭

Uh ... that can not be good!

This might have a few unintended launch consequences.

Jeb Kerbal approves.

just don't let the POTUS steer

I'm just saying; the earth is already moving on its own, so it'd be way better logistics wise to simply prevent the spaceship from moving. It'll make it to space eventually :3

I love futurama

And gives us a longer year.

On the bright side, if this works, earth will be quite a bit slimmer as well

My brain canon is taking this as the the origin of Unicron.

And that OTHER Futurama episode where they solve global warming by moving the Earth a little bit farther from the Sun.

Oh, I'm sending this one to my dad.

To reduce the weight of the spacecrafts you could fuel them with semaglutide.

Title text: "It does come at the cost of some launchpad expansions and increased fuel requirements, but that all comes out of the facility's budget." Alt text: https://explainxkcd.com/3291#Transcript