Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive

Wired | 24 Sep 2008

[Fractal Trader]

(wired) Link Only:

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/chinese-buildin.html

[mhx]

Impossible.

But I hope they invest a lot in this promising technology.

[CE2949BB]

It's about the EmDrive.

[DManA]

I remember reading about that:

As technology progressed, so too did the methods [Dick] Tracy and the police used to track and capture criminals. These took the form of increasingly fanciful atomic-powered gadgets and devices developed by Diet Smith Industries. This eventually led to what Gould thought was its logical conclusion in the 1960s with the advent of the Space Coupe, a spacecraft with a magnetic propulsion system.

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

[Blood of Tyrants]

Very interesting. If true, a spaceship would not have to accelerate and decelerate the fuel on board, which is basically dead weight until it is used for propulsion.

[xp38]

"Light speed? Too slow. We're gonna have to go to Ludicrous speed!" ―Dark Helmet

[dead]

The really good news is that they’re going to sell them for twenty-nine cents apiece.

[Vaquero]

its named the Hwang Ho and an idiot can fly it except it has to be a Chinese idiot as the operators manual is in Chinese

Kilgore Trout

‘Venus on the Half Shell’

[bigbob]

Meh, I’m holding out for the Libby-Sheffield Para-Drive...

[stylin_geek]

I prefer the “spindizzy” with entire cities going “okie.”

Anti-agathic, anyone?

[Rio]

Or the Infinite Improbability Drive.

[Rio]

Or the Infinite Improbability Drive.

[r9etb]

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/09/chinese-buildin.html

[Vaquero]

ah, James Blish

‘Cities in Flight’.

love it.

[r9etb]

"It is well known that Roger Shawyer's 'electromagnetic relativity drive' violates the law of conservation of momentum, making it simply the latest in a long line of 'perpetuum mobiles' that have been proposed and disproved for centuries," wrote John Costella, an Australian physicist. "His analysis is rubbish and his 'drive' impossible."

You know ... I want Shawyer's theory to be right, just to see Mr. Costella have to eat his words.

[stylin_geek]

Heck, what’s an Earth or two when a new galactic freeway needs to be built....

[Ax]

Barak HUSSEIN Osama: “I will not weaponize space.”

[Petronski]

That can only mean one thing: they’ve discovered a plentiful supply of inobtanium!

[stylin_geek]

Probably one of the three best SF theme novel series.

The other two probably being “Dune” and the Dorsai series.

[steve86]

Particles bouncing off a surface, even at a shallow angle, impart a force perpendicular to the surface, not at the angle of the incoming particle (my summary). I had to think about that, as it is counter-intuitive unless you think it through, but sure enough, that objection is valid. The change in the particle’s direction uses up the rest of the momentum (approximate statement).