Posted on 12/25/2016 8:46:40 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Scientists with the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST) claim NASA’s results ‘re-confirm’ what they’d already achieved, and have plans to implement it in satellites ‘as quickly as possible.’ China claims they’ve created a working prototype of the ‘impossible’ reactionless engine – and they say they’re already testing it in orbit aboard the Tiangong-2 space laboratory. The radical, fuel-free EmDrive recently stirred up controversy after a paper published by a team of NASA researchers appeared to show they’d successfully built the technology.
The implications for this could be huge. For instance, current satellites could be half the size they are today without the need to carry fuel.
At a press conference in Beijing, researchers with CAST confirmed the government has been funding research into the technology since 2010, and claimed they’ve developed a device that’s already being tested in low-Earth orbit, IBTimes UK reports. It comes just a month after anonymous sources told IBTimes UK that tests on the EmDrive were underway aboard Tiangong-2 shown below....
(Excerpt) Read more at dailygalaxy.com ...
If anything, “higher level laws” tend to add more restrictions, not more freedom. For example, Newton’s laws of gravity were not replaced by General Relativity, but instead become a subset of them. Newton’s laws are not invalidated by GR, only modified and restricted.
It’s not breaking the laws of physics though.
It’s breaking Newton’s third law of motion.
No. It’s not. You just think it is.
In a zero - or more princely low gravity - environment, trivial forces can become substantial. I don't know much about this "EM Drive" but seems to fit that. Now how about spinning up a gyroscope in space and using that for a drive system...
I've read at least one analysis which argues that the EM drive can work, and without breaking the currently accepted laws of physics...
I’ve heard the arguments from the designer himself. He says it doesn’t violate the conservation of momentum law because it produces quantum vacuum fluctuations accounting for it. That would be the only circumstance in which no laws are violated, but he has shown no evidence that this is occurring, or no method by which it is. Like I said originally, I’ll believe it when I see it.
A gyroscope produces only angular momentum, not thrust. But even then, all motion is conserved. To spin something, you need to apply an opposite force. If I spin a top, I would have to apply a force that would make me spin the other direction if I couldn’t use the friction of the ground against my shoes to stop me. Conservation of momentum means that for every object set in motion, it is balanced by another object, so that the net result amounts to zero.
“For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”.
Yes. When Oneanderthalobama declared NASA a muzzie outreach program, the Chinese began dealing with the Klingons.
More from Jerry Pournelle’s website.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/china-claims-orbital-test-of-em-drive/
Yes, but the mastery of the superset gives us greater capabilities. No archer would have believed a missile could fire faster than the sound it makes. No people, before fight believed flight was possible. Before biology, it was believed illness was from the gods or fate.
At the same those greater capabilities gave us greater risk. Until the advent of the bomb, nobody thought it possible to end the world.
Well, eight years of Obama, and this is his legacy, China space program beats the US space program. Obama has pushed us belong China in technology.
But bullets, birds, and bacteria violate no physical laws. We’re talking about something completely different here. It’s not about refusal to believe or the inability to imagine, but making 2 + 2 = 7. It’s simply not possible.
Totally right. Resonant cavities were invented over a hundred years ago. Klystrons have been used in electronic applications for eighty years. Now suddenly, Roger Shawyer has found a resonant cavity use in propulsion?
From Wikipedia:
New Scientist also published a letter from the former technical director of EADS Astrium, who stated: "I reviewed Roger’s work and concluded that both theory and experiment were fatally flawed. Roger was advised that the company had no interest in the device, did not wish to seek patent coverage and in fact did not wish to be associated with it in any way",[26] and a letter from physicist Paul Friedlander, who statedBull at its best. Where is the in home fuel cell, or the feasible fusion reactor as promised by 2016?As I read it, I, like the thousands of other physicists who will have read it, immediately realised that this was impossible as described. Physicists are trained to use certain fundamental principles to analyse a problem and this claim clearly flouted one of them ... The Shawyer drive is as impossible as perpetual motion. Relativistic conservation of momentum has been understood for a century and dictates that if nothing emerges from Shawyer’s device then its centre of mass will not accelerate. It is likely that Shawyer has used an approximation somewhere in his calculations that would have been reasonable if he hadn’t then multiplied the result by 50,000. The reason physicists value principles such as conservation of momentum is that they act as a reality check against errors of this kind.[27]
We know that bullets don’t violate the laws of physics, because we understand the physics involved. However, to an ancient archer, it looks like wizardry. The lifts up a magic wand and a loud noise ensues and somebody in the far distance drops dead. Magic.
If the EM drive works, it is not violating physics. It is obeying the laws of physics in ways we do not understand, but are beginning to.
I’ll tell you what makes sense—your use of the word “if”. “If” it works, then it means our understanding of physics is fundamentally flawed. So fundamentally, in fact, that we’ll have to start over again all the way back from the dark ages. I don’t think that’s the case. Like I said and will continue saying, I need to see it work for myself. No more of this “he said she said” stuff.
They say satellite will require “no on-board propellant” to generate thrust.
Does that imply something like solar energy is involved?
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