Posted on 11/20/2016 12:12:58 PM PST by BenLurkin
M Drive, the microwave radiation thruster capable of propelling a spacecraft without any fuel, has been heating up the debates over the past couple of years. The concept of EM Drive has been facing harsh criticism as it appears to violate the Newtons Third Law of Motion, which says that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.
In a recent development, a full and official peer-reviewed paper on EM Drive has been published online. This paper has appeared via the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA)s Journal of Propulsion and Power.
While the publication of this paper doesnt guarantee EM Drives real world applications, it surely approves the methodology of the experiments. It also confirms that NASAs EM Drive constantly produces 1.2 millinewtons per kilowatt of thrust in a vacuum.
(Excerpt) Read more at fossbytes.com ...
Dr. John Slough:
https://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/early_stage_innovation/niac/2012_phaseII_fellows_slough.html
It’s easy to get energy and power from arrays in space as long as there is a sufficient light source.
I haven’t read the paper yet but I would expect to see an electric motor drive a controllable inertia device of some sort to propel movement. Thus, no fuel needed.
Not sure why the writer of this is creating confusion with Newton’s 3rd Law other than to add drama (we need better writers in science; probably the current pay is abysmal so they get the bottom of the barrel).
Newton’s laws are never violated because the definitions and terms he adopted and crafted ensure their veracity by definition. like a system of arithmetic.
It’s easy to get energy and power from arrays in space as long as there is a sufficient light source.
I haven’t read the paper yet but I would expect to see an electric motor drive a controllable inertia device of some sort to propel movement. Thus, no fuel needed.
Not sure why the writer of this is creating confusion with Newton’s 3rd Law other than to add drama (we need better writers in science; probably the current pay is abysmal so they get the bottom of the barrel).
Newton’s laws are never violated because the definitions and terms he adopted and crafted ensure their veracity by definition. like a system of arithmetic.
Photons can transition to a particle-antiparticle pair for a brief moment of time. Virtual particle production is difficult to directly observe—the evidence for their existence as more than a mathematical device, is based on observations of random perturbations of the hydrogen atom’s electron.
As a pair of charged particles, an interaction with electrical / magnetic fields is allowed, and transfer of momentum can occur. The lifetime of the virtual particle-antiparticle pair is very short, so interaction with the surrounding environment is limited.
A cavity filled with electromagnetic fields will have a fleeting opportunity to transfer momentum to any particles briefly present; and, thus the low thrust from the device at present. Engineering may be able to improve results with a complete understanding of how the effect occurs.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/are-virtual-particles-rea/
The accumulation can be additive at an increasing rate resulting in an exponential yield. Conservation of momentum applies here.
Sure, I understand that......
You understand addition.
Exponential sums are like addition that is performed faster and faster. It’s an accelerating addition.
Simple example with arithmetic:
It takes say 1 sec to add X + X
It takes half the time to add another X.
So now we have that it takes 1.5 sec to add (X + X) + X.
Each time we add an X to the total, it takes only half the time as before.
The result is exponential, an addition process that is increasing at an increasing rate, i.e. acceleration.
If the NASA boys and girls can get a miniscule amount of thrust from an EM Drive and they keep adding small amounts at an increasing rate, they are going to get a huge amount of thrust via an exponential process.
The point was to counter the misunderstanding that a miniscule amount of thrust was not worth the effort.
In nuclear physics, it’s similar. We split one atom and we get a barely noticeable release of energy. If we split a quadrillion atoms, the energy is enormous.
In the context of this EM Drive, an amount of thrust causes movement. Adding more thrust causes faster movement. Adding more and more thrust causes acceleration. There would seem to be no end to it except that in frictionless space, the speed attained in limited by the speed of light.
Ha...you just hit on the design of a Warp Drive
Build a Hydrogen Bomb with a fucussed energy input to a EMdrive unit.
Better yet...a deuterium fusion generator coupled to an EMdrive ...and awaaaay we go.
Spokeshave who is waiting for another Paradigm Shift.
What JoeFromSidney said.
Sounds like something out of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Zaphod Beeblebrox; President of the Universe recently commented on the 'Infinite Improbability Drive' saying, and I quote:
"Yeah, it's amazingly amazing!"
“Which means we dont fully understand physics correctly”
Sheldon Coopers world has been turned upside down, and it’s not pretty.
I suppose it's relative to what you want. I wonder how fast Voyager 1 would be moving by now if it had 1.2 millinewtons of thrust going all this time. I suspect the cumulative effect would be significant.
I get that. Braking is an issue too. I guess you could have some equivalent of ‘impulse power’. There are also all the hotel and lab systems.
All things that can be overcome, and millijoules is a start.
Nope. Nothing is being ejected directionally. That's why there is a big question about this. If it was simply shooting microwaves out the back as thrust, that would be different. The thing that is weird about this is that as far as we can tell, nothing at all is leaving the chamber.
If the observed thrust turns out not to be a measurement error, this is huge. It will revolutionize what we can do in space.
It doesn’t. It just uses physics in an interesting new way.
That was one result on one test rig. Others have gotten quite a bit better results. Further, ALL of these are just “proof of concept” rigs.
Scale up both power and size, you’ll get a similar boost in apparent thrust.
Shawyer supposedly has a deal with Gilo Industries to produce a flying car.
http://giloindustriesgroup.com/
Take that for what you will...
Yep...
10kw nuke generator hooked to a superconducting frustum...
Theoretical max speed is .67C before the push and the inertia cancel out.
http://cannae.com/new-superconducting-demo-scheduled/
Constant acceleration is an increase in displacement at a rate linearly increasing with time.
Exponential increase depends on a rate of increase proportional to the size of the thing being increased. That's it. dy/dx = a y, or dy/y = a dx ... solution is y = y0 exp ( a x ) ( with y=y0 at x=0)
Who said anything about ‘constant’ acceleration?
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