I was watching Serenity last night and the Reaver spaceships fired harpoons attached to a cable into the Alliance ships accelerated and/or or turned away and tore chunks out of those spacecraft.

Would this actually work or would you just tow the ships along with you.

Cymek said:

I was watching Serenity last night and the Reaver spaceships fired harpoons attached to a cable into the Alliance ships accelerated and/or or turned away and tore chunks out of those spacecraft.

Would this actually work or would you just tow the ships along with you.

It would be possible to engineer them to tear chunk off, with a suitably fast retraction.

doing some tinkering cymek?

Cymek said:

I was watching Serenity last night and the Reaver spaceships fired harpoons attached to a cable into the Alliance ships accelerated and/or or turned away and tore chunks out of those spacecraft.

Would this actually work or would you just tow the ships along with you.

This would actually work, provided the the cable is stretchy enough to avoid snapping under the sudden loading. The challenge is to get the harpoon to stick in place rather than tearing free.

I proposed harpooning an asteroid many years ago. The Philae lander was equipped to do this but landed so softly that the harpoon didn’t launch.

Cymek said:

I was watching Serenity last night and the Reaver spaceships fired harpoons attached to a cable into the Alliance ships accelerated and/or or turned away and tore chunks out of those spacecraft.

Would this actually work or would you just tow the ships along with you.

Don’t know, but it would be handy for creating a parking space for your motorcar either way.