Whoa! New type of space drive discovered

[William Gaatjes]

Amazing. ^_^

 

[William Gaatjes]

It reminds of those ionizers that ionize the air and thus an airflow is produced that cause the lift for the craft.
Maybe the RF waves ionize that air in the structure in a similar fashion.
I am just guessing here.

tests in vacuum must be conducted to know for sure.

An ionocraft or ion-propelled aircraft (commonly known as a lifter or hexalifter) is a device that uses an electrical electrohydrodynamic (EHD) phenomenon to produce thrust in the air without requiring any combustion or moving parts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ionocraft

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I would be thinking constant thrust would be the factor there, ya.

You could always have conventional also, and have a space hybrid, I'd think you'd want some redundancy anyway.

Someone check my math but a hurried calculation shows that a 40kN thrust applied to a mass equal to the space shuttle fully fueled for launch will cover 200 million km in 17 days. That is from 0 to vmax to 0 velocity.

 

[Ichinisan]

I made one with Lego bricks. Then I needed the pieces to make something else.

Now I don't remember how I built it the first time

 

[torlen11cc]

WOW.

 

[Paratus]

I had posted about the Q-thruster back in this thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2387033&highlight=warp+drive

If you want to see an interesting video on the Q- thruster and their other experiment, (warp drive - yes seriously) check out this link:

http://youtu.be/9M8yht_ofHc



I have a friend who worked with the group at JSC. I've had a chance to see their setup. From what I understand they're going have other NASA centers confirm their findings and possibly follow up with a test article on the ISS.

IF their findings continue to check out the Q-thruster would be a game changer for interplanetary exploration. With an X megawatt sized nuclear reactor Mars is a few weeks away instead of months, the outer planets are a few months away instead of years, and you could conceivably send a probe to Alpha Centauri in a few decades instead of 10,000s of years.


If they don't hold up, I still maintain this is the type of investigation and basic science NASA should be doing.

 

[Hayabusa Rider]

I had posted about the Q-thruster back in this thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2387033&highlight=warp+drive

If you want to see an interesting video on the Q- thruster and their other experiment, (warp drive - yes seriously) check out this link:

http://youtu.be/9M8yht_ofHc



I have a friend who worked with the group at JSC. I've had a chance to see their setup. From what I understand they're going have other NASA centers confirm their findings and possibly follow up with a test article on the ISS.

IF their findings continue to check out the Q-thruster would be a game changer for interplanetary exploration. With an X megawatt sized nuclear reactor Mars is a few weeks away instead of months, the outer planets are a few months away instead of years, and you could conceivably send a probe to Alpha Centauri in a few decades instead of 10,000s of years.


If they don't hold up, I still maintain this is the type of investigation and basic science NASA should be doing.

I'm not sold on the warp drive by any means, but I'm keen on seeing the results of the emdrive. If it's real it's huge.

 

[Paratus]

I'm not sold on the warp drive by any means, but I'm keen on seeing the results of the emdrive. If it's real it's huge.

I agree, and the team working on the warp drive hasn't said it works either. The most they've said is the experiment produced some data and they probably need a more sensitive test.

The q-thruster has the most potential right now. One thing to think about, if the proposed theory of operation is true, and it does push on virtual particles. There is plenty of quantum vacuum inside normal atoms. Virtual particles don't really need a true normal vacuum the way we think about it, to exist.

From Scientific American

Gordon Kane, director of the Michigan Center for Theoretical Physics at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, provides this answer.
Virtual particles are indeed real particles. Quantum theory predicts that every particle spends some time as a combination of other particles in all possible ways. These predictions are very well understood and tested.
Quantum mechanics allows, and indeed requires, temporary violations of conservation of energy, so one particle can become a pair of heavier particles (the so-called virtual particles), which quickly rejoin into the original particle as if they had never been there. If that were all that occurred we would still be confident that it was a real effect because it is an intrinsic part of quantum mechanics, which is extremely well tested, and is a complete and tightly woven theory--if any part of it were wrong the whole structure would collapse.
But while the virtual particles are briefly part of our world they can interact with other particles, and that leads to a number of tests of the quantum-mechanical predictions about virtual particles. The first test was understood in the late 1940s. In a hydrogen atom an electron and a proton are bound together by photons (the quanta of the electromagnetic field). Every photon will spend some time as a virtual electron plus its antiparticle, the virtual positron, since this is allowed by quantum mechanics as described above. The hydrogen atom has two energy levels that coincidentally seem to have the same energy. But when the atom is in one of those levels it interacts differently with the virtual electron and positron than when it is in the other, so their energies are shifted a tiny bit because of those interactions. That shift was measured by Willis Lamb and the Lamb shift was born, for which a Nobel Prize was eventually awarded.

 

[BarkingGhostar]

This is awesome! Breakthroughs like this can lead to completely new technologies. The working hypothesis so far is that this device might tap into quantum vacuum energy...and if that's the case this could be an incredible discovery that would revolutionize spacetravel.

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2014-07/31/nasa-validates-impossible-space-drive

How is this a discovery vs. an invention? Was the device already existing when humans 'discovered it'?

 

[Fritzo]

How is this a discovery vs. an invention? Was the device already existing when humans 'discovered it'?

The principle has never been demonstrated before.

 

[halik]

I read that the other day. fucking awesome actually.

Wow is that's true, it's a huuge breaktrhough.

 

[Mark R]

The principle has never been demonstrated before.

The problem is that the experiment tells us that it's not working the way the designer "thinks" it is working.

They tested both a "real" drive and a "dummy" drive which was a clone of the real drive with the purported thrust producing components removed . Both the real and dummy produced the same thrust under the same conditions.

While the cause of the thrust may not be known, the mechanism suggested by the drive designer is unlikely to be correct, if the removal of the purported thrust producing components doesn't nullify the thrust.

 

[halik]

"Thrust was observed on both test
articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce
thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal physical modifications that were designed to produce
thrust, while the other did not (with the latter being referred to as the “null” test article). "

Odd

 

[gorcorps]

Maybe I'm missing it, but are there any details in what kind of atmosphere they were testing it in? I imagine it was at least under vacuum to confirm it's not traditional thrust, but I haven't found anything that says it. If it was tested under vacuum, then maybe in atmosphere there would be so much air resistance to negate anything else going on. They'd still have to use a rocket to get into thin enough air for the new drives to work.

 

[irishScott]

Not be a bucket of cold water, but Arstechnica laid out why this should be greeted with skepticism:

http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/08/dont-buy-stock-in-impossible-space-drives-just-yet/

 

[Ichinisan]

The problem is that the experiment tells us that it's not working the way the designer "thinks" it is working.

They tested both a "real" drive and a "dummy" drive which was a clone of the real drive with the purported thrust producing components removed . Both the real and dummy produced the same thrust under the same conditions.

While the cause of the thrust may not be known, the mechanism suggested by the drive designer is unlikely to be correct, if the removal of the purported thrust producing components doesn't nullify the thrust.

I read that the dummy drive was created as a control in the experiment. I did not read that it produced thrust.

 

[Mark R]

I read that the dummy drive was created as a control in the experiment. I did not read that it produced thrust.

It's buried deep in the small print of the actual paper. It's not reported in the press releases on which most of the articles are based on.

 

[Mark R]

Maybe I'm missing it, but are there any details in what kind of atmosphere they were testing it in? I imagine it was at least under vacuum to confirm it's not traditional thrust, but I haven't found anything that says it. If it was tested under vacuum, then maybe in atmosphere there would be so much air resistance to negate anything else going on. They'd still have to use a rocket to get into thin enough air for the new drives to work.

The test was performed in a vacuum chamber. However, it was performed at "ambient" pressure - so no, not tested in a vacuum.

 

[mmntech]

Very interesting, but I don't get the last part : "take astronauts to Mars in weeks rather than months".

I guess the idea is you could have constant thrust, instead of set burns for X length of time, but the thrust would be so minimal, that it would take weeks to get up to chemical propellant speeds. And, it would take weeks to slow down for orbit also.

If they are assuming these could eventually generate the same type of thrust as conventional engines, then a constant burn might explain it, but again, you'd have to thrust to gain delta v half the time, and thrust to lose delta v half the time to gain an orbit. Making that statement, in this case, seems pretty far fetched.

That's assuming a spacecraft can only have one type of engine. You could use traditional or nuclear rockets to propel it up to speed, then use an EM drive to provide thrust for the remainder of the trip. Or, you could use it to replace chemical RCS thrusters for steering the ship. You wouldn't need a great deal of thrust for that.

The tech is still in the "it might be possible" stage though. Still a lot more work to be done, and it could be just a wild goose chase.

 

[OverVolt]

More through testing is required before we can say for sure that the effect is real.

Thats the conclusion to every scientific paper just like happily ever after is the conclusion to every kids book.

 

[BUTCH1]

Very interesting, but I don't get the last part : "take astronauts to Mars in weeks rather than months".

I guess the idea is you could have constant thrust, instead of set burns for X length of time, but the thrust would be so minimal, that it would take weeks to get up to chemical propellant speeds. And, it would take weeks to slow down for orbit also.

If they are assuming these could eventually generate the same type of thrust as conventional engines, then a constant burn might explain it, but again, you'd have to thrust to gain delta v half the time, and thrust to lose delta v half the time to gain an orbit. Making that statement, in this case, seems pretty far fetched.

There is the option of using Mars's atmosphere to slow an incoming craft with the proper trajectory, it's already been done with probes but the technique might be risky or the mass of a manned vessel might make it unpractical.

 

[Thebobo]

They have successfully flow Ion engines
Thruster vs. EmDrive

SMART-1 ion engine
Power required 700 W
Thrust generated 70 millinewtons
Operational life 1.6 year
Weight 94 kilograms


Electromagnetic drive
Power required 700 W
Thrust generated 83 millinewtons
Operational life 15 year
Weight 8 kilograms

 

[Thebobo]

What we need for space travel (until we warp space) is a propulsion system that can provide a constant 1g

 

[Jeff7]

"Thrust was observed on both test
articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce
thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal physical modifications that were designed to produce
thrust, while the other did not (with the latter being referred to as the “null” test article). "

Odd

"Then we put a piece of cheese into the testing rig, and it also produced thrust."


:hmm:

 

[William Gaatjes]

They should modify the drive to scoop up hydrogen atoms and ions from for example solarwind, at the front, then create a em field to collect those ions together. Then change the field to push against those ions creating thrust forwards. It would work in stages creating bursts of thrust. The time between the thrust bursts would depend on how much material is locally present in space.

Those ions naturally repel eachother but also from a field with the same polarity. Use the repelling nature present in ions for thrust.