A friend and I have been having an ongoing debate for years. We were at a pub on a wharf, watching shipping container ships and cruise ships come into dock, and he posed the question. With no wind, no waves, perfect conditions, could he move the ship at all?
In: Planetary Science
Assuming drag does not COMPLETELY stop the ship, which I feel is a reasonable assumption given that ships are built to move, then yes. Technically. It would be *mind bogglingly slow*, but yes. The ship would have so much inertia that you’d probably need scientific instruments to measure its movement, but there is no such thing as an immoveable object, so a very small force on a very big object produces a very very tiny acceleration.
Ideally, you’d want ropes and one hell of a pully system with like a 1,000,000:1 mechanical advantage. You’d have to pull a rope for a few miles to move the ship a couple of inches, but you could definitely do it.
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