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New Test suggests NASA's EM Drive will work in space

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ThoseDeafMutes

Member
Blizzard said:
I know some problems are known, like bone mass, however. Some science fiction books have distant-future human descendents who genetically engineered their whole family lines to be specifically stronger in zero-gravity situations. I imagine that might be possible in the future, but that always gets into ethical situations to me with a sort of "space master race".
Click to expand...

That doesn't sound like much of an ethical situation. Some people will use genetic engineering and technological augmentation to adapt themselves to their new environment. If somebody wants to stubbornly stay "pure" for religious or personal reasons that's their choice but we can't hold everyone else back because there's a couple of stragglers, metaphorically speaking.
 
T

TrounceX

Member
Since this is where the discussion is heading:

Here's an NPR Science Friday podcast where Julie Robinson, NASA head scientist of the ISS, talks about long term exposure to 0 gravity environments, and also the trouble with creating artificial gravity through centrifugal force. I learned a lot from it.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
ThoseDeafMutes said:
That doesn't sound like much of an ethical situation. Some people will use genetic engineering and technological augmentation to adapt themselves to their new environment. If somebody wants to stubbornly stay "pure" for religious or personal reasons that's their choice but we can't hold everyone else back because there's a couple of stragglers, metaphorically speaking.
Click to expand...
Of course, but the issue starts involving things like "What about those who happened to be born to one of the poorer family lines, or who can't afford to buy augmentation? Are they looked down on as inferior, or a different race?"

A new sort of racism could eventually emerge.
 
T

TheGreatDirector

Banned
Blizzard said:
If it's not yet known what effect it will have, how do you know artificial gravity is a must? :p

If it's truly unknown, then it would seem the answer is "Artificial gravity might be a must, pending further research."

I know some problems are known, like bone mass, however. Some science fiction books have distant-future human descendents who genetically engineered their whole family lines to be specifically tailored for zero-gravity situations. I imagine that might be possible in the future, but that always gets into ethical situations to me with a sort of "space master race".
Click to expand...

In before Zeons.

Most science fiction dealing with space colonies detail humans evolving in their skeletal structure and muscles to accommodate the lack of weight. It's a given that eventually we're gonna have genetically diversity involving extending outside of earth. The issues of any "master race" will naturally be brought up but the fact remains that earth will still be important to all humans due to its natural resources and place in human history as our birthplace.
 
A

aliengmr

Member
Blizzard said:
If it's not yet known what effect it will have, how do you know artificial gravity is a must? :p

If it's truly unknown, then it would seem the answer is "Artificial gravity might be a must, pending further research."

I know some problems are known, like bone mass, however. Some science fiction books have distant-future human descendents who genetically engineered their whole family lines to be specifically tailored for zero-gravity situations. I imagine that might be possible in the future, but that always gets into ethical situations to me with a sort of "space master race".
Click to expand...

Well yea, if you have a sci-fi magic gene wand, you could probably solve the problem.

It goes beyond bone mass though. Gravity effects organ development, cell structure, the brain, pretty much everything. Gravity is a must, unless you have space magic.

Its not completely unknown, there have been tests with rats with no successful reproduction without gravity. So there's that.
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
aliengmr said:
Well yea, if you have a sci-fi magic gene wand, you could probably solve the problem.

It goes beyond bone mass though. Gravity effects organ development, cell structure, the brain, pretty much everything. Gravity is a must, unless you have space magic.

Its not completely unknown, there have been tests with rats with no successful reproduction without gravity. So there's that.
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Thanks, I didn't know about the rat tests.
 
L

LX_Theo

Banned
Man said:
KkUB0dL.jpg
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Love this pic
 
B

Blizzard

Banned
Laekon said:
What do these zero g humans do once they reach a planet?
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In the series I was thinking of, they were traders, so I think they spent most of their time in travel or orbital stations. They could apparently still survive on planets though.
 
R

Raven Prime

Member
Blizzard said:
Of course, but the issue starts involving things like "What about those who happened to be born to one of the poorer family lines, or who can't afford to buy augmentation? Are they looked down on as inferior, or a different race?"

A new sort of racism could eventually emerge.
Click to expand...

That's assuming we would still be living in societies that support inequality. Generally speaking when imagining the future, I tend to assume we will actually improve on things and situations. Since when looking at the past, this is generally the case with most things.

Then again status and power struggles seem to be a permanent part of societies. Even then I would think that these elements have also become less prominent or at least less disruptive over the last millennia.

In any way, I'm convinced that humanity's future will be best served by egalitarian societies instead of unequal ones. And unless there are strong rational reasons that go against this trajectory, I can't imagine us successfully surviving without taking that path.
I would also assume that universal education and an universal basic income will greatly aid this process.
 
M

Makai

Member
Blizzard said:
Of course, but the issue starts involving things like "What about those who happened to be born to one of the poorer family lines, or who can't afford to buy augmentation? Are they looked down on as inferior, or a different race?"

A new sort of racism could eventually emerge.
Click to expand...
That's what he have now, minus the genetic augmentation.
 
F

foxuzamaki

Doesn't read OPs, especially not his own
Ladies and gentlemen, the time to pioneer space is sooner than we think.
Now maybe we can start exploring in a thousand years instead of ten
Naw fuck it, we're almost there, we can go to other systems now.
 
D

DieH@rd

Banned
Kai Dracon said:
The thing about space travel, is all you need is a tiny amount of thrust... applied consistently over a long period of time.

Even if there turns out to be some arcane limitation on this effect scaling upwards past a certain point, the prospect of a persistent thruster that does not require a tank of rocket fuel has applications.
Click to expand...

This. Coupled with slim spaceship design because no fuel needs to carried, small thrust can do wonders [especially if some megawat-level nuclear generator is on board].
 
G

gutshot

Member
The Technomancer said:
Honestly I could totally believe that this totally exists and works for the kind of microthrust in question

But the idea that its ever going to scale up into something feasible for space travel is...questionable
Click to expand...

Whether or not it scales up is the next hurdle to be crossed. To that end, Eagleworks plans to build a 1.2 kW model (as opposed to the 100 W model they have been using). They are hoping to have it ready for testing in late June/early July.
 
I

Ikael

Member
ThoseDeafMutes said:
That doesn't sound like much of an ethical situation. Some people will use genetic engineering and technological augmentation to adapt themselves to their new environment. If somebody wants to stubbornly stay "pure" for religious or personal reasons that's their choice but we can't hold everyone else back because there's a couple of stragglers, metaphorically speaking.
Click to expand...

We either devise some short of universal genetic improvement healthcare system, or we are going to witness the mother of all class conflicts. If genetic enhancement becomes an arms race with a distinct advantage tilted towards the ones with more money at their disposal (and hereditary to boot) this could create some serious social conflicts. Wealth disparities becoming genetic disparities doesn't bode well for anyone. So yes, it is indeed an ethic problem because you're not only going foward yourself alone, but you're leaving the entire non-wealthy human race behind in the process.
 
E

Epsilon-delta

Banned
Ikael said:
We either devise some short of universal genetic improvement healthcare system, or we are going to witness the mother of all class conflicts. If genetic enhancement becomes an arms race with a distinct advantage tilted towards the ones with more money at their disposal (and hereditary to boot) this could create some serious social conflicts. Wealth disparities becoming genetic disparities doesn't bode well for anyone. So yes, it is indeed an ethic problem because you're not only going foward yourself alone, but you're leaving the entire non-wealthy human race behind in the process.
Click to expand...

Like you said, it has to be universal or you'll have riots like the world has never seen.
 
C

Calabi

Member
Ikael said:
We either devise some short of universal genetic improvement healthcare system, or we are going to witness the mother of all class conflicts. If genetic enhancement becomes an arms race with a distinct advantage tilted towards the ones with more money at their disposal (and hereditary to boot) this could create some serious social conflicts. Wealth disparities becoming genetic disparities doesn't bode well for anyone. So yes, it is indeed an ethic problem because you're not only going foward yourself alone, but you're leaving the entire non-wealthy human race behind in the process.
Click to expand...

What threat is one percent of the population going to be? Wealth distribution/the middle class is declining, there's not going to be enough people to afford this stuff at the prices they want to charge.

Even so let them be the first to be experimented on, in the beginning its highly unlikely to work or work well, and there will be lots of snake oil salesmen, by the time it get's to the rest of us it will be more reliable and safer.
 
R

Raven Prime

Member
Ikael said:
We either devise some short of universal genetic improvement healthcare system, or we are going to witness the mother of all class conflicts. If genetic enhancement becomes an arms race with a distinct advantage tilted towards the ones with more money at their disposal (and hereditary to boot) this could create some serious social conflicts. Wealth disparities becoming genetic disparities doesn't bode well for anyone. So yes, it is indeed an ethic problem because you're not only going foward yourself alone, but you're leaving the entire non-wealthy human race behind in the process.
Click to expand...

We shouldn't forget that predictions about the future tend to be conservative, and sometimes the opposite when it concerns the near-future. So many things tend to change at the same time, that we always fail to realize the overall impact they will have when they all come together when shaping the future. Anyway, I came across this article today that suggests that human genetic modification might be a lot easier than many think:

'The process used to edit the genes of human embryos is so easy you could do it in a community bio-hacker space'
 
K

King Tubby

Member
W

Wreav

Banned
No one gives 2 shits about the implications of a warp drive with this tech. We just want that propellant-less speed.
 
V

Veritigo_X

Member
So they're just downplaying the "warp drive" aspect of it? I didn't think people actually thought the EM Drive was a warp drive, but okay. As long as the other stuff is true I'm happy.
 
D

DarkKyo

Member
darkwing said:
dream is dead :(
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The dream will never die!
The idea that they could test this a vacuum and have a fully-function warp drive afterwards was a bit naive and irresponsible for anyone to write about, even in headline form. If this is the first seed of a new technology it will still take a lot of research, testing, and development before it pans out to anything worthwhile, regardless of how revolutionary it is. Check back in 25 years and see how far this technology has come, then determine if the dream is dead.
 
W

Wreav

Banned
Hoping someone can explain this better than I, but check this shit out.

As I understand it, this guy has reconciled the observed results with existing physics and relativity. Basically, the EM Drive could actually be a gravity field generator, and that's why it appears to warp space time when lasers are fired through its field.

If this is true, it's massive, massive news. Eagleworks desperately needs some peer review.
 
Battersea Power Station

Battersea Power Station

Member
Wreav said:
Hoping someone can explain this better than I, but check this shit out.

As I understand it, this guy has reconciled the observed results with existing physics and relativity. Basically, the EM Drive could actually be a gravity field generator, and that's why it appears to warp space time when lasers are fired through its field.

If this is true, it's massive, massive news. Eagleworks desperately needs some peer review.
Click to expand...
Where'd you find the article?
 
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