Whoa! New type of space drive discovered

[MarkXIX]

Look, I know the cost of taking things into space is expensive, but let's just take this shit into space and test it and put the issue to rest. I honestly don't know who to believe at this point, so let's get on with it.

 

[Ruptga]

Anyone know what theoretical speeds we are talking with a scaled up version? I saw some articles mention making it to Saturn in 3 months which is quite impressive.

Speed is 100% relative in space. It's a big deal because it apparently works without any propellant, just electricity. That means, if we put a bigass electrical generator on it (huge solar array, RTG, or nuclear reactor), then effectively the sky is the limit.

There is no way to accurately translate that into something like "only 60 days to marz" because of transfer windows, whether the vessel is built for a short sprint or endurance, size of what you're delivering to mars or whatever, etc, etc.

Think of it like this, this kind of engine could, in theory, be used to move a spacecraft that could be active in the solar system for decades. That means one launch and all you need to do is get to orbit, have this thing pick you up, and you're off to the moon or wherever. We've had probes functioning for decades, like the voyager probes, but they have simply been existing for that long, they used up essentially all of their propellant long ago and have been drifting since. They've been drifting where we want them to, but still, drifting. If this engine works out we could have things last just as long, but they could potentially be completely active for the entire life of the probe or ship, meaning, TLDR: we could send things basically anywhere in the solar system because our rockets would never run out of gas, ever.

 

[Paratus]

Speed is 100% relative in space. It's a big deal because it apparently works without any propellant, just electricity. That means, if we put a bigass electrical generator on it (huge solar array, RTG, or nuclear reactor), then effectively the sky is the limit.

There is no way to accurately translate that into something like "only 60 days to marz" because of transfer windows, whether the vessel is built for a short sprint or endurance, size of what you're delivering to mars or whatever, etc, etc.

Think of it like this, this kind of engine could, in theory, be used to move a spacecraft that could be active in the solar system for decades. That means one launch and all you need to do is get to orbit, have this thing pick you up, and you're off to the moon or wherever. We've had probes functioning for decades, like the voyager probes, but they have simply been existing for that long, they used up essentially all of their propellant long ago and have been drifting since. They've been drifting where we want them to, but still, drifting. If this engine works out we could have things last just as long, but they could potentially be completely active for the entire life of the probe or ship, meaning, TLDR: we could send things basically anywhere in the solar system because our rockets would never run out of gas, ever.

If I remember correctly 1-3 months to Mars one way vs 9 months for a chemical rocket. 9-15 months to Saturn. 18 months to Pluto vs 9 years for new horizons

90 years to Alpha Centauri at .1c.

It really depends on how many MW you can throw at it and how much mass the vehicle has in addition to what's the average acceleration per watt you can get out of the thruster.

 

[Phoenix86]

TLDR: we could send things basically anywhere in the solar system because our rockets would never run out of gas, ever.

This is what's potentially game changing.

Currently if you want to go from A to B it requires X thrust vs a given mass. To do this, we burn thrusters at full speed for a short duration. Once we hit that speed we stop to save fuel, do some small correction burns, and just float the rest of the way.

Fuel is everything.

If you have unlimited fuel you go full speed until the half way point, then spin around and slow down to the desired speed. Full burn all the way. You get there WAY faster because you go from a <1 minute burn to a 10 hour burn (cut in half). Even if you have much lower thrust it doesn't matter. No friction, all thrust is gain (roughly), eventually the time side of the equation will tip the scales at a liner rate. Slow and steady wins.

I found the quote for that "70 days to Mars" line which has the thrust.

http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-has-trialled-an-engine-that-would-take-us-to-Mars-in-10-weeks
Harold (Sonny) White, the leader of the research group at Eaglework, predicts that a crewed mission to Mars inside a 2 MegaWatt nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft, powered by an EM Drive with a thrust/power input of 0.4 Newton/kW, could get to Mars in a mind-boggling 70 days.

But wait, there's more! Fuel is a ton of weight, literally. Guess what just got opened up for cargo? Designs would radically change.

Even more. Orbital decay is a thing of the past since the engine that got the craft there could always fire occasionally to correct it since all it needs is power. You can run satellites off of solar + this engine.

If it works as advertised.

Jaskalas has an interesting theory, but I'd think we would be able to observe that. It makes more sense that we're affecting an unknown particle, but who knows!

 

[Paratus]

Look, I know the cost of taking things into space is expensive, but let's just take this shit into space and test it and put the issue to rest. I honestly don't know who to believe at this point, so let's get on with it.

Believe this.

From experimental evidence:

• 5 teams have tested these devices (2 inventors, an academic Chinese team, a small NASA team, and now a German team)
• These devices produce small amounts of measurable thrust. (Every team)
• They do this in pressure or in vacuum(NASA & Germans)
• The force scales with input power and quality factor. (Chinese got milinewtons of force with several kw, NASA got micronewtons with 10's of watts)
• Thrust was instantaneous when power was applied(NASA)
• Thrust reversed when the thruster was pointed the opposite way(NASA)
• No thrust was measured when thruster was removed and a resistive load was put in its place.
• No one has a proven theory on what's happening
• Niether has anyone proven its a experimental error
• Each test has removed some experimental error but other sources may remain
• No peer-reviewed literature has been published just yet.

(as no one has a working theory on this thruster eithe for it working or what the error is it is too soon to say it violates conservation of momentum. My bet is even if it works it conserves momentum)
That's basically where we are at right now.

 

[Paratus]

This is what's potentially game changing.

Currently if you want to go from A to B it requires X thrust vs a given mass. To do this, we burn thrusters at full speed for a short duration. Once we hit that speed we stop to save fuel, do some small correction burns, and just float the rest of the way.

Fuel is everything.

If you have unlimited fuel you go full speed until the half way point, then spin around and slow down to the desired speed. Full burn all the way. You get there WAY faster because you go from a <1 minute burn to a 10 hour burn (cut in half). Even if you have much lower thrust it doesn't matter. No friction, all thrust is gain (roughly), eventually the time side of the equation will tip the scales at a liner rate. Slow and steady wins.

I found the quote for that "70 days to Mars" line which has the thrust.

http://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-has-trialled-an-engine-that-would-take-us-to-Mars-in-10-weeks
Harold (Sonny) White, the leader of the research group at Eaglework, predicts that a crewed mission to Mars inside a 2 MegaWatt nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft, powered by an EM Drive with a thrust/power input of 0.4 Newton/kW, could get to Mars in a mind-boggling 70 days.

But wait, there's more! Fuel is a ton of weight, literally. Guess what just got opened up for cargo? Designs would radically change.

Even more. Orbital decay is a thing of the past since the engine that got the craft there could always fire occasionally to correct it since all it needs is power. You can run satellites off of solar + this engine.

If it works as advertised.

Jaskalas has an interesting theory, but I'd think we would be able to observe that. It makes more sense that we're affecting an unknown particle, but who knows!

The only hypothesis I've heard is from Sonny White. It's basically using the same magnetohydrodynamic equations plasma and ion thrusters use but the working fluid are the virtual particles that pop in and out of excuse at the quantum level. The same phenomenon that the Casmir force measures.

The thruster pushes on them for the brief time they exist. The thruster goes one way, the particles go the other and then annihilate each other conserving energy and momentum. This is only a hypothesis of course.

If it's experimental error it's probably some weird magnetic field coupling or emf.

 

[manimal]

The only hypothesis I've heard is from Sonny White. It's basically using the same magnetohydrodynamic equations plasma and ion thrusters use but the working fluid are the virtual particles that pop in and out of excuse at the quantum level. The same phenomenon that the Casmir force measures.

The thruster pushes on them for the brief time they exist. The thruster goes one way, the particles go the other and then annihilate each other conserving energy and momentum. This is only a hypothesis of course.

If it's experimental error it's probably some weird magnetic field coupling or emf.

I am hoping its a warp field.

 

[Paratus]

I am hoping its a warp field.

It might be....
White-Juday Warp-Field Interferometer

During the first two weeks April 2015, scientists fired lasers through the EmDrive's resonance chamber[clarification needed] and noticed highly significant variations in the path time. The readings indicated that some of the laser pulses traveled longer, possibly pointing to a slight warp bubble inside the resonance chamber of the device. However, a small rise in ambient air temperature inside the chamber was also recorded, which could possibly have caused the recorded fluctuation in speeds of the laser pulses. According to Paul March a NASA JSC researcher, the experiment will be verified inside a vacuum chamber to remove all interference of air, which was done at the end of April 2015.[14][15] Although, White doesn't believe the measured change in path length is due to transient air heating because the visibility threshold is 40 times larger than the predicted effect from air.

The experiment used a short, cylindrical, aluminum resonant cavity excited at a natural frequency of 1.48 GHz with an input power of 30 Watts, over 27,000 cycles of data (each 1.5 sec cycle energizing the system for 0.75 sec and de-energizing it for 0.75 sec) were averaged to obtain a power spectrum that revealed a signal frequency of 0.65 Hz with amplitude clearly above system noise. Four additional tests were successfully conducted that demonstrated repeatability.[16]

No peer review yet. So don't get your hopes up. Yet

 

[Artorias]

Sounds to good to be true, something so revolutionary would be classified and not made public until patented along with a practical application.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Get some MIT smart guys working on this.

 

[Markbnj]

Did anyone link this yet? Sorry if it's a repost. I kind of hate to get too excited but... independent confirmation? Can this be real?

http://www.sciencealert.com/indepen...-that-the-impossible-em-drive-produces-thrust

Edit: finished reading it. Not yet sure how excited to be. It's another independent and pretty well-respected scientist saying that the damn thing produces thrust. How can this be a mistake?

 

[Paratus]

Did anyone link this yet? Sorry if it's a repost. I kind of hate to get too excited but... independent confirmation? Can this be real?

http://www.sciencealert.com/indepen...-that-the-impossible-em-drive-produces-thrust

Edit: finished reading it. Not yet sure how excited to be. It's another independent and pretty well-respected scientist saying that the damn thing produces thrust. How can this be a mistake?

There's still enough uncertainty to be unsure. If the NASA guys can complete their next round of testing with higher power levels and higher thrust while accounting for the remaining experimental uncertainty then maybe.

It would also help to have a working theory.

 

[Phoenix86]

Get some MIT smart guys working on this.

We have top men working on it right now.

I thought I already said this.

 

[halik]

From the paper, still looks bullshitty:
"The control experiment (vertical &#8211; upwards direction) actually gave the biggest thrust with up to 224 µN. "

 

[Ruptga]

Sounds to good to be true, something so revolutionary would be classified and not made public until patented along with a practical application.

The government can't classify it if they only heard about it at the same time as the rest of the world. Also that doesn't have anything to do with it working or not, but it is still possible that it doesn't actually work. Don't jump to conclusions either way, real science takes time.

 

[Markbnj]

It would also help to have a working theory.

Newton had to observe the apocryphal apple falling before he could figure out why it fell. We saw birds flying before we knew how flight worked, and the sun shining before we understood fusion. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that what we already know should predict or account for any possible observable phenomena. I admit that I hope this is true at least in part to have confirmation that we're wrong about that.

 

[Phoenix86]

Newton had to observe the apocryphal apple falling before he could figure out why it fell. We saw birds flying before we knew how flight worked, and the sun shining before we understood fusion. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that what we already know should predict or account for any possible observable phenomena. I admit that I hope this is true at least in part to have confirmation that we're wrong about that.

Or rather, gravity existed and we used it long before we had a working theory. Of course it's nice to know why and exactly how, but it's not necessary to make use of it.

 

[manimal]

It might be....
White-Juday Warp-Field Interferometer


No peer review yet. So don't get your hopes up. Yet

I am actually more hopeful that its a real phenomena because we cant explain it yet.


So much emerging science these day is the adaptation of new materials to old ideas. My hope that this is more like a sea change that punts existing science onto another field. The longer we cant explain it the more exited we should be.






So whos gonna be guy that figures it out like Plank?

 

[DrPizza]

Newton had to observe the apocryphal apple falling before he could figure out why it fell. We saw birds flying before we knew how flight worked, and the sun shining before we understood fusion. Sometimes we fall into the trap of thinking that what we already know should predict or account for any possible observable phenomena. I admit that I hope this is true at least in part to have confirmation that we're wrong about that.

There's experimental physics, there's experimental physics. You can go from theory to experiment, or from experiment to theory. I find it bothersome that as posted somewhere above that these experiments "measured output matched the theoretical formulas." How do you have theoretical formulas without a working theory?! Or is it simply, "those guys used 15 watts and measured this much thrust. We're using 30 watts, so expect this much thrust"?

I still have a gut feeling that with the precision that current theories understand waves and fields, and with so many researching skeptical of these results as being a form of experimental error, that it's just not going to pan out. BUT, if it did, that would be highly exciting. And, with multiple groups either having the "same" source of error, else all establishing that this phenomenon is real, it seems worthy of financing research into that area.

Edit: I meant to say theoretical physics.

 

[Ichinisan]

There's experimental physics, there's experimental physics. You can go from theory to experiment, or from experiment to theory. I find it bothersome that as posted somewhere above that these experiments "measured output matched the theoretical formulas." How do you have theoretical formulas without a working theory?! Or is it simply, "those guys used 15 watts and measured this much thrust. We're using 30 watts, so expect this much thrust"?

I still have a gut feeling that with the precision that current theories understand waves and fields, and with so many researching skeptical of these results as being a form of experimental error, that it's just not going to pan out. BUT, if it did, that would be highly exciting. And, with multiple groups either having the "same" source of error, else all establishing that this phenomenon is real, it seems worthy of financing research into that area.

I don't think we'll have sufficient confirmation until a test is performed away from the influence of Earth's magnetic field. Even then, I'd have to wonder if the sun's influence is a factor.

 

[Charmonium]

Photons can spontaneously transform into particle-anti-particle pairs. This is one possible explanation for why neutrinos from a supernova arrived before the light did.

If the photons in the burst of light transformed into particle pairs and then annihilated each other back into photons, those particles would have been much more massive than neutrinos which have almost no mass. Therefore they would have been affected more by gravitational fields.

So maybe what the microwave field is accelerating isn't virtual particle pairs but particles that temporarily pop into existence from the photons in the microwave radiation itself.

 

[Markbnj]

There's experimental physics, there's experimental physics. You can go from theory to experiment, or from experiment to theory. I find it bothersome that as posted somewhere above that these experiments "measured output matched the theoretical formulas." How do you have theoretical formulas without a working theory?! Or is it simply, "those guys used 15 watts and measured this much thrust. We're using 30 watts, so expect this much thrust"?

I still have a gut feeling that with the precision that current theories understand waves and fields, and with so many researching skeptical of these results as being a form of experimental error, that it's just not going to pan out. BUT, if it did, that would be highly exciting. And, with multiple groups either having the "same" source of error, else all establishing that this phenomenon is real, it seems worthy of financing research into that area.

Agreed, all those things are what make me skeptical and temper any excitement at these announcements. But it is also what fuels my imagination with a sense of how awesome it would be if it turned out to be real.

 

[ImpulsE69]

My guess is it is all a giant hoax by some guy holding a tiny magnet under the table :sneaky:

 

[ElFenix]

Rather not have top minds being so greedy as they need to worry about being "top." So they get a good pay and do something great for mankind, would be all I need to be fulfilled.

edit: i see this was already posted

 

[Phoenix86]

edit: i see this was already posted

:thumbsup::beer;