Fly to the moon in 4 hours: British scientist who says he's found secret of Star Trek's 'warp speed'

The London Daily Mail ^ | May 14, 2015 | Tom Leonard in New York

[2ndDivisionVet]

* Nasa is thought to have successfully tested a revolutionary power source
* Claimed it could fly for eons at the equivalent of 450 million miles an hour
* It is powered by a device similar to that found in a microwave oven
* Invented by now retired British scientist Roger Shawyer a decade ago

Anyone who has ever watched an episode of Star Trek or a Star Wars film will know how it works.

The good guys are minding their business in outer space when suddenly the Klingons or the Dark Empire bear down on them out of nowhere.

There is only one way out. At the flick of a switch, our heroes are flashed — in a blur of passing stars — to safety elsewhere in the universe.

Call it warp drive or a hyper drive, it adds up to the same thing: a miraculous power source that allows a spacecraft to fly at unimaginable speeds.

But while it’s so far confined to the realms of sci-fi, the concept could become reality.

U.S. space agency Nasa is thought to have successfully tested a revolutionary new power source that could enable spacecraft to travel to the Moon in just four hours instead of more than three days and to Mars in two or three weeks instead of seven months.

Compact enough to fit into a suitcase, this whizzy new device could — it is claimed — keep flying for eons, at the equivalent of an astonishing 450 million miles an hour....

[Focault's Pendulum]

Spindizzy?

Spindizzy only works on cities.

[concernedcitizen76]

Bits:

“‘Ye cannae alter the laws of physics,’ wailed Scotty...

Mr Shawyer says: ‘There’s no magic in it. It fully complies with the laws of Newton, Einstein and [Scottish physicist James] Maxwell.

But that force tends to be tiny, unless you can amplify it. Mr Shawyer says he did just that.

His crucial discovery was that if you make one end of the (Magnetron) tube wider, they exert more pressure on the other end, thereby pushing the whole thing forward.

He also explains that the EmDrive accelerates gradually but continuously as long as you keep powering it with electricity (via solar or nuclear power).

Its inventor calculates that an interstellar probe would take ten years to reach two-thirds the speed of light, which he sees as pretty much the limit of how fast we could practically travel.

(The effects of such speeds on the body aren’t clear, but this steady increase in pace should avoid subjecting astronauts to dangerously rapid forces of acceleration.)

Still, that’s an astonishing 450 million miles an hour.