Posted on 05/01/2015 4:42:00 PM PDT by Thud
"Last year, NASA’s advanced propulsion research wing made headlines by announcing the successful test of a physics-defying electromagnetic drive, or EM drive. Now, this futuristic engine, which could in theory propel objects to near-relativistic speeds, has been shown to work inside a space-like vacuum.
NASA Eagleworks made the announcement quite unassumingly via NASASpaceFlight.com. There’s also a major discussion going on about the engine and the physics that drives it at the site’s forum."
... "The NASASpaceflight.com group has given consideration to whether the experimental measurements of thrust force were the result of an artifact. Despite considerable effort within the NASASpaceflight.com forum to dismiss the reported thrust as an artifact, the EM Drive results have yet to be falsified.After consistent reports of thrust measurements from EM Drive experiments in the US, UK, and China – at thrust levels several thousand times in excess of a photon rocket, and now under hard vacuum conditions – the question of where the thrust is coming from deserves serious inquiry."
(Excerpt) Read more at io9.com ...
A small acceleration rate over a long enough distance can produce a very high velocity. Throw in the Earth's relative motion and you can get an impressive energy release. Plus the spacecraft could easily be a hundred tons plus in mass.
I hear that a cold-fusion-powered reactionless space drive has been examined by Top Experts gathered in an apartment house in Milan, Italy. Advance deposits on your very own model are now being accepted!
So, if we posit an energy source good for years at a time (nuclear), what thrust to weight ratio would be necessary for an aircraft/spacecraft to spiral right out into orbit?
Clearly, a 1 g thruster could just lift directly off of the earth. That would be a thrust to weight ratio of one. But without relying on air for fuel, could a thruster system keep accelerating at very high altitudes and spiral into orbit?
If incoming space debris can “skip” off the atmosphere, is there a way to use atmospheric lift to achieve the roughly 8,000 m/s needed for orbit with a thrust ratio lower than 1?
Near lightspeed or even significantly fractional lightspeed projectiles would be fearsome weapons, indeed.
But you cannot (in the case we are talking about) get more energy out of a space ship than you pack into it.
I suppose that you could release all the power of a nuclear reactor, working for years, in fraction of a second, achieving, essentially, an atomic bomb.
I would be more worried, I think about somebody out in the asteroid belt lobbing rocks at earth. Rocks are cheap, and you already have quite a bit of energy from the Sun’s gravity.
If we start having star flight, we will have to post early warning systems around the system, I guess.
When you get above about .5 C, I do not see how even a warning system would work.
This could go fast but I wonder if it could trade speed for power. For example could it be used to nudge small asteroids into near Earth orbit to be mined.
IMO nudging them into LaGrange orbits, particularly to lunar LaGrange points, would be more likely.
You think full military control would make them safer?
The LaGrange points make a lot of sense for mining.
Do you really want a government contractor moving asteroids into near earth orbit.
The last folks who tried that were dinosaurs.
Cold fusion deja vu all over again.
Nah ... we had a buncha "gangstas" to feed.
Not saying this device will work as claimed. However, it differs from cold fusion in that we have three separate labs test it and come up with similar results.
They appeared to be careful about protocols and eliminating errors.
They were in full control of the devices, which were constructed separately (at least two different devices).
The measurements are claimed to be several times the measurement error, not down in the “noise” level.
I will be looking for more testing by other labs. I am sure a lot of people will be checking this out.
If it proves true, it could be more change engendering, in the long run, than cold fusion.
Darpa should be looking hard at this.
It has enormous military potential.
Fire a softball sized rock into a city at almost the speed of light....oh yeah!
That would definitely rate a WOW!
No thanks. OOPS.
Your working light saber is right next to the Tasp.
(Mixing Star Trek, Star Wars, and Ringworld)
No biggie. Mount the drives and just throw rocks...there's a whole asteroid belt full of 'em.
After reading that, I was suddenly reminded of the thrusters allegedly being used by these "top-secret" TR3 craft, which supposedly have some kind of propulsion using mercury plasma accelerated in magnetic fields to extremely high speeds, and even producing some kind of relativistic mass-reducing effect along the way.
I wonder if this Emdrive could be tangentially related to that sort of propulsion?
On another note, it would be very odd to see this technology developed successfully, and go into widespread use, all the while with no scientific explanation for why it works!
Interesting times...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.