Posted on 08/01/2014 12:08:29 PM PDT by DannyTN
If the tests of the Cannae Drive technology hold up, a trip to Mars could take weeks instead of months
7 inShare NASA has been testing new space travel technologies throughout its entire history, but the results of its latest experiment may be the most exciting yet — if they hold up. Earlier this week at a conference in Cleveland, Ohio, scientists with NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories in Houston, Texas, presented a paper indicating they had achieved a small amount of thrust from a container that had no traditional fuels, only microwaves, bouncing around inside it. If the results can be replicated reliably and scaled up — and that's a big "if," since NASA only produced them on a very small scale over a two-day period — they could ultimately result in ultra-light weight, ultra fast spacecraft that could carry humans to Mars in weeks instead of months, and to the nearest star system outside our own (Proxima Centurai) in just about 30 years.
... More at site
(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
Yes, yes, that’s all well and good, but how does this affect global warming, or muslims?
NASA has a mandate, and this tomfoolery just seems to get in the way.
Yes. We just need more funding. Lots and lots of it.
Stop polluting outer space with radiation!/s
Wave Motion engine?
Cool. Now build the Yamato.
Muslims had this centuries ago in the form of a carpet!
Cool!
Dilithium crystals?
If not, I’m going back to sleep.
And it makes a bag of popcorn in 2 minutes!
Flying carpets, pishhhaahhh. Mohammed had a flying horse.
I read about ion engines in 1952, when I was in High School, we are leaping forward.
Don’t forget a wave motion gun in case the Gamelons, Decipitcons, or Marvin shows up.
Will 0bama allow it?
Bush Senior said we would have a man on Mars by 2019.
the inventor is a for-profit venture that have asked nasa to test his invention to confirm
Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual indicates that the impulse engines are nuclear fusion engines where the plasma from the fusion reactor powers a massive magnetic coil to propel the ship. It is a form of magnetohydrodynamic or magnetoplasmadynamic thruster. This is used in conjunction with the ship's warp drive's alteration of the ship's relativistic mass, to achieve mid-to-high sub-light speeds. Thrusters, on the other hand, are closer to the designs of a high-efficiency reactant propellant (i.e. a sophisticated rocket engine) and are usually used for high-precision maneuvers. Ion propulsion drives are explicitly detailed to be used in Star Trek by Dominion and Iconian Starships and facilities.
cool
” they had achieved a small amount of thrust from a container that had no traditional fuels, only microwaves,”
It offers the side benefit of doing a fantastic job on popcorn for movie night.
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