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.
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(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...
bump
but just try launching something that heavy right now
“There are many reasons to be skeptical: the inventor of the Cannae Drive, Guido Fetta, has only a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering and is operating his company Cannae as a for-profit venture.”
Inventor has only a BS in an unrelated field, confirmed by Chinese and Argentine scientists and even the negative control worked when tested by the affirmative action hirees at NASA. Results dont get any more solid than that.
What would be the advantage of having humans explore the planet Mars? There isn’t sufficient water for plant life, there’s no oxygen and there’s no food. It seems to me this is just another way to piss away tax dollars.
“There are many reasons to be skeptical: the inventor of the Cannae Drive, Guido Fetta, has only a Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering and is operating his company Cannae as a for-profit venture.”
UH?? The inventor has a degree in chemical engineering and operates a for-profit company, therefore it’s bogus??
I’m not familiar with “the Verge” - is this run by some snotty socialist?
Every day my satellite dish moves to the other side of the house all by itself and I have to move it back every night.
Cool story.
Thanks for sharing.
BFL
“Flying carpets, pishhhaahhh. Mohammed had a flying horse.”
Named Baraq, incidentally.
Nothing mysterious nor does it appear to violate any physical laws. It simply relies on radiation pressure. The description is somewhat misleading regarding “no tradition fuels”, but generating microwaves obviously takes energy, usually electrical to drive klystron or magnetron tubes. So think of a wave guide (pringles can) attached to a nuclear battery. The poynting vector goes out the tube nozzle producing radiation pressure, and by conservation of linear momentum our battery and wave guide go the other way.
LOL. A plastic propeller and rubber band can do better.
We could power this thing with cold fusion, I’m sure.
I’ve got an idea for a spaceship powered by a sharknado, think I can get some grant money?
Yeah, I thought that pointing out “for profit” as a reason to be skeptical was strange too.
Whats grey and red and bubbly all over?
Elephant in a microwave.
I wonder if that “weeks instead of months” thought includes deceleration?
I just heard “42” in the office not 2 minutes ago.
My brother read my copy of Adam’s books and came outside and said, “What was that guy on when he wrote that?”
The bistromatic drive was my favorite. The drive based on the speed of bad news seemed like it had great potential.
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