The "Impossible" Engine is real, NASA says so!
- Thread starter Cragvis
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First picture of the engine:
I've always wondered if plugging a power bar into a power bar would work.
I really hope this turns out to be verifiable and a legitimate thruster. Something like this would be highly beneficial to long distance space travel and would actually accelerate our current technological growth.
For now I'll keep my expectations in check, but damn this is cool stuff.
For now I'll keep my expectations in check, but damn this is cool stuff.
sonikokaruto
Banned
i just
first the digimon news
then this
the the news that we gonna go plant a new oxygen producing rover on mars...
fuck!
first the digimon news
then this
the the news that we gonna go plant a new oxygen producing rover on mars...
fuck!
Since the thrust is so little, yes only space, but if we could make ones that are as powerful as a car engine, then I dont see why we couldnt use it for cars on earth.
Unless they can greatly increase the amount of thrust possible, it's usage would probably remain mostly in space.
Edit: Dammit cat! Always one step ahead.
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
I think the problem was that many of them were not being skeptical. For years they simply dismissed the idea of the engine because it didn't align with their understanding of physics.
CapitalismSucks DonkeyBalls
Banned
This
I feel stupid believing this would actually work.
Also, lots of big words being tossed around. Very interesting.
Of course.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
Uh
so this seems cool
so this seems cool
greatestjediever
Member
I have no idea what the order of magnitude typical astronomical propulsion is compared to the micro/millinewtons that this is capable of generating, but wouldn't it take awhile to accelerate that much?
I'd assume we'd only be able to accelerate up to half of the trip, since the other half of the trip we would need to decelerate for safe landing. Just a guess though.
aliens gave obama an engine to never come back to the moon
SigmasonicX
Member
Basically, as I understand it, the physics being broken is that microwaves are being bounced around in a closed container inside the ship. All the interactions are within the system, so the system itself should have no net force in any direction, yet there is.
Joel Was Right
Member
I can only wonder where the tech comes from
Fenderputty
Banned
So then it become a question of how fast we an go with this tech and how long it would take to safely slow down at those speeds. Reminds me of the Ion Drive.
yea, good point.
Or if they had different powers of thrusters on the front end. small ones in back to keep increasing acceleration, and powerful ones up front to stop faster in a shorter amount of time. so we can spend more time traveling faster. 90% time flying near light speed to our new galaxy and 10% time spent de-thrusting with much more powerful thrusters
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
The real questions are:
-How much electricity did they need to run the trial?
-What is the scaling behavior of the effect
-How much electricity did they need to run the trial?
-What is the scaling behavior of the effect
Always bet on science, bitches.
No, scientists are supposed to have their feet planted firmly on the ground and are supposed to be the fiercest skeptics. Surprisingly, it is science fiction authors and the public at large that are the ones that think almost anything is possible and often motivate advances in technology.
Name/Tag/Avatar quote, etc.
No, scientists are supposed to have their feet planted firmly on the ground and are supposed to be the fiercest skeptics. Surprisingly, it is science fiction authors and the public at large that are the ones that think almost anything is possible and often motivate advances in technology.
Name/Tag/Avatar quote, etc.
Exactly, scientists know HOW it works, but they dont know WHY. Technically it shouldn't.
Shaking a box of marbles and the marbles hitting the inside walls should not make you move in a certain direction lol.
We don't know why the waves hitting the walls of the container are creating a thrust effect to propel the container. Very odd.
There would be nothing to see.
Every rocket currently works by taking something and throwing it out the back really fast. Either you burn some sort of liquid fuel and oxygen, or occasionally you ionise some gas and use electromagnets to shoot the ions out. Then you get an equal and opposite reaction and your spacecraft shoots off in the opposite direction.
Eventually though you run out of stuff to throw out the back and you can't speed up any more. Even if you have loads of electrical power from a reactor or solar panels, you can't use it to speed up the spacecraft because if you have nothing to push against, because you'd be breaking the conservation of momentum.
This new engine claims to be able to push the rocket forward without seemingly pushing anything out the back, it just does something weird with microwaves and (possibly) creates some thrust. If it worked it would mean you could have a spacecraft that never ran out of fuel, you could just keep going as long as you had power.
It'd be huge for small long distance space probes, but with the amounts of thrust they're talking about it'd be unlikely to be much use for any manned spacecraft, or any rovers heading to Mars or anything, unless you want to wait a long long time to get up to Earth's escape velocity.
I wouldn't be surprised if this doesn't end up like CERN's faster-than-light neutrinos, and ends up being an experimental error though.
FO-totality
Poet Centuriate
In comparison: the Saturn V had 34,020,000 Newtons of thrust. Manned Maneuvering Unit (MMU) that astronauts use has 24 thrusters each with 7.5 N of thrust. The Descent stage of the Apollo Lunar Module (LM) was 44,400 N at full throttle. The Deep Space 1 (DS1) probe's ion drive had a thrust of 92 millinewtons. This is most comparable with an ion drive, but without fuel.
The benefit here is 1) you don't have to worry about when to do burns because you can just constantly accelerate and 2) you don't have to carry any fuel, so that saves mass and you don't have to push as much.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I wish I could read the full paper. There has to be something about the topology of the container or something that controls the direction of thrust, or else it's useless.
Fenderputty
Banned
Good point .... I would hope it could be powered with solar, but I imagine we could also use nuclear batteries like the Mars river no?
A british bloke was on about it for the past twenty years and no one took him seriously until the Chinese gave it a go.
Providing everything can scale up and equations work out it would be possible to travel to mars in just a few days, the moon a few hours and our nearest star within thirty years. Now to get those pesky Fusion reactors working properly.
Basically this is really good for inter solar system travel. Extra solar travel would take a warp drive.
As for the physics as to why this drive appears to work, well it dips into quantum theory and that is still tricky for us to understand so it's no big surprise that we have a poor understanding of the hows and whys.
Yes! Like science fiction bs, except real. I'm super excited all of a sudden
shadyspace
Banned
What digimon news? Did they find out digimon are real?
Solar would be good but fusion reactors would be way better, Antimatter would be the Holy grail but fission and especially fusion would suffice and get you to very high speeds.
http://ntrs.nasa.gov/search.jsp?R=20140006052
So they basically moved some normal particles with their low energy photons which was observed by the low-thrust torsion pendulum? How can they claim to have propulsive momentum transfer via the quantum vacuum virtual plasma when they didn't even test it in vacuum.
So they basically moved some normal particles with their low energy photons which was observed by the low-thrust torsion pendulum? How can they claim to have propulsive momentum transfer via the quantum vacuum virtual plasma when they didn't even test it in vacuum.
Couldn't they just do a hybrid with conventional fuel means to get into space and this 'engine' for long distance space travel?
Even the probe's ion drive was pumping out 3000 times what NASA's test drive was doing. People are getting way ahead of themselves with the talk of near-light speed travel. There's no guarantee this tech scales up to a size useful for anything that isn't an unmanned probe.
Fenderputty
Banned
Fusion would be ideal, but I'm talking about current energy tech that could be used with this engine.
Ol No Bones
Banned
Next stop, proton torpedoes!
I don't think NASA have claimed that. They just stated their results, and made no claim about how it might work, and did state that they got the same results on the control device.
I still think this will come to nothing.
electroflame
Member
I dunno, I'd rather beeline for the shield and cloaking technologies first, interstellar travel is a bitch if a speck of dust can penetrate your ship's hull when you're going fast enough.
That does seem the most likely outcome. When was the last time we discovered something that completely defied the classical laws of physics?
Blargonaut
Banned
SOON
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