http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2002/07/020718075904.htm

Excerpt:

  Most missions are designed to take advantage of the way gravity
  pulls on a spacecraft when it swings by a body such as a planet or
  moon. Lo's theory mixes in another factor, the Sun's pull on the
  planets or a planet's pull on its nearby moons. Forces from many
  directions nearly cancel each other out, leaving paths through the
  gravity fields in which spacecraft can travel.

  Each planet and moon has five locations in space called Lagrange
  points, where one body's gravity balances another's. Spacecraft can
  orbit there while burning very little fuel. To find the Interplanetary
  Superhighway, Lo mapped all the possible flight paths among the
  Lagrange points, varying the distance the spacecraft would go and how
  fast or slow it would travel. Like threads twisted together to form a
  rope, the possible flight paths formed tubes in space. Lo plans to map
  out these tubes for the whole solar system.


-- 
"Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>       http://www.erikreuter.net/

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