See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_drive particularly this article http://www.rexresearch.com/dean/stine.htm
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NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
71–80 of 98 posts
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interstellar ships will be shaped like pencils to deflect rather than impact gasses. They will also have to have consumable nose cone sections with old ones in the front being removed and new ones installed at that back. Like a mechanical pencil.
What happens when the ship has to turn around to decelerate, with its engines facing the front?
Zubrin, in Entering Space, introduced me to the idea of using a solar or much larger magnetic sail to drag against the outcoming solar wind of the destination star. So that's one way to spend no energy slowing down for interstellar travel.
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#73I would like to see more pictures of his desk. I adore such setups.
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#74Not this shit again... Look closely at the picture of the test chamber in the article. Do you see Helmholtz coils surrounding the entire apparatus? Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_coil It's the same story as the EMdrive: they run something at high current, without cancelling earth's magnetic field. high current + earth magnetic field = force. This method is used to move satellites: https://en.wikipedia.…
Be careful here. Magnetorquers do exactly what the name says - they create torque , which manifests as rotation around a point. If a device demonstrates linear force, it's likely to be a different effect (electrodynamic), which currently requires a rather long tether to work [1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrodynamic_tether
Right, or we can just link to the physical law itself: - Lorentz force - the force on a current carrying wire. No need for a long wire. It's in the range of micro-Newtons for few Amps, for 10cm, at earth magnetic field:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorentz_force#Force_on_a_curre...
"When a wire carrying an electric current is placed in a magnetic field, each of the moving charges, which comprise the current, experiences the Lorentz force, and together they can create a macroscopic force on the wire (sometimes called the Laplace force)."
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#75This sounds, like the EM drive, too much like trying to move your car by sitting inside and pushing on the dashboard.... Still, a "vacuum propeller" would be a massive revolution (no pun intended) if it is at all possible.
It is because the payoffs would be so enormous that business like this and "overunity motors" continue to gain attention. All of those other elixirs were shams, but this one will work! Finally, immortality! The enormity of the reward causes the payout matrix to lead people astray. Don't get me wrong, I see a vacuum chamber, which is light years ahead of most of these enterprises, but I would not spend a dime on it un…
Propellant-less propulsion within the confines of Earth's magnetic field or gravity well is still pretty valuable. The entire space economy at the moment is Earth satellites, all of which are constrained by propellant.
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#76> On a clear night in March 1967, Woodward was stargazing on the rooftop of Pensión Santa Cruz, a hotel in the heart of Seville, in Spain.... As Woodward gazed up from atop his Spanish hotel, he saw a speck of light arcing across the sky and mentally calculated its path. But as he watched the satellite, it began deviating from its expected trajectory—first by a little and then by a lot. > Everything Woodward knew abo…
Would a satellite on a low-altitude Highly Elliptical Orbit be a possibility? From Earth, the apogee would make an HEO satellite go in one direction then suddenly change course. With a low enough altitude, this could seem fast enough.
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#77So, I have to ask: If Elon Musk is working on propulsion tech to go to Mars, and Bob Lazar claims to have worked on reverse engineering propellentless tech and is one of the single digit number of living people to have encountered it directly, and NASA is slow rolling their own understanding of it, given the limited available expertise in this area how can Musk afford to not hire Lazar? From a due diligence perspecti…
Your logic assumes only one such person. The problem is that there are tens of thousands of similar people with, let's be super kind, unlikely ideas. If you hire them all that's not a hedge that's a huge cost with an almost 0% probability of payoff. I'd bet the number of such people with unreasonable ideas will go drastically up if you start hiring them too.
The analog I'm thinking of is that space propulsion could turn out to be as much of a sandbox as cybersecurity and crytpo have been, where there was always a ceiling above which everyone just agreed to not look. I'm being super charitable about Lazar, but having been in the security field both pre- and post- Snowden, Lazar is more like a Binnie or Drake figure, with the full extent of the issue still further off in the future. What good technologists suspected about crypto and saw little edges of, vs. what ultimately came out implies companies like those mentioned above would need to have done some deeper arguments and analysis beyond blowing him off as just a kook. Musk's opinion on Lazar would be interesting for its own sake.
However, this is also like saying you have to rule out every "free energy" conspiracy before starting a battery company as well, so it's not really that much of a forcing function at all.
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#78Not this shit again... Look closely at the picture of the test chamber in the article. Do you see Helmholtz coils surrounding the entire apparatus? Nope. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helmholtz_coil It's the same story as the EMdrive: they run something at high current, without cancelling earth's magnetic field. high current + earth magnetic field = force. This method is used to move satellites: https://en.wikipedia.…
I find it quite hard to believe that this obvious question wasn't challenged by anyone. To me it is like questioning if any of the people involved prior to publishing this news are capable of solving 1+1.
It's basic. I don't think of the relevant people as idiots.
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#79I would like to see more pictures of his desk. I adore such setups.
I'm more curious to learn why the image on the monitor shows a screenshot instead of an actual desktop or open program(s).
Re: NASA Funded Scientists Claim Breakthrough in Propellantless Propulsion
#80It's worth noting that if a propellentless drive works, it will probably generate free energy . This may adjust your expectations on how likely this idea is. How likely is a free energy device (ie, one that reliably gives you more energy out than you put in)? Well, this thruster can't be any more likely, because it would produce free energy. https://arxiv.org/abs/1506.00494 > the kinetic energy of a mass with a const…
Did you read Mach's Principle? It would not create free energy. And yes, it's quite probably people more specialized in this field would've asked this question before.