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EM Drive -> non-linear scaling -> possible warp?

RabidAlpaca said:
It would not be a quick-reaction thrust, you would still need some other kind of chemical propulsion for that. For long cruises however, there really is nothing better we've even dreamt of.










The concept works, it's now been proven. Scalability is still uncertain, but that it works is not.

Official report



They tested it in a vacuum chamber and it does work.
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Good report, thanks for the link.

These are still very weak thrust numbers. In regards to the OP, extrapolating some non-linearity sounds like wishful thinking. I wish the mechanism was better understood.
 
RabidAlpaca said:
They tested it in a vacuum chamber and it does work.
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No, they definitely stress that they cannot confirm that it produces thrust. It appears to produce small amounts of thrust, but they are small enough that there are any number of possible avenues for measurement error. NASA says it's far too early to conclude that it produces thrust at all, and it's their freaking test.

And they definitely don't say anything regarding "hyperspace."
 
There's a proper and sensible way to do things - and when you have claims of some fundamental new physics, then the only way to validate them is through science labs that specialize in Fundamental Research, whether university labs or even the National Laboratories (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, etc).

NASA may have good engineers and astrophysicists, but they're not specialized for validating Fundamental Physics. Other outfits are better suited to this task, and nobody should take hyped claims at face value.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof.
 
Put in on a scale in vacuum facing up, if it's weight decreases, it has may have thrust.
Have the same test run with 10 labs and with a dummy weight as a control set,
if all 10 show some the weight of the drive decreasing, it would start to look like a validation.
 
PoS said:
As I stated in another thread, even if they can get this thing to work, its delta-v and thrust to weight ratio would still be inferior to chemical drives currently in use. The one advantage it has over the other drives is in its almost non-existent fuel consumption, which would be a negligible advantage once we can figure out in orbit refueling and ISRU on planets like Mars.
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That wouldn't be a negligible advantage at all. The longer you can apply thrust the faster you can go. The reason ION drives and such are preferred is their ability to apply steady thrust over the course of months and years rather than hours, which means their top speed is far above chemical rockets.

In atmosphere there would be a higher top speed of chemical rockets, but without the wind resistance an ION or EM drive will keep accelerating for as long as you apply thrust. You could theoretically equip a ship with this drive with a huge array of solar panels and circle the Sun continually gaining speed.
 
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jmotivator said:
That wouldn't be a negligible advantage at all. The longer you can apply thrust the faster you can go. The reason ION drives and such are preferred is their ability to apply steady thrust over the course of months and years rather than hours, which means their top speed is far above chemical rockets.
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It takes a long time for an ion drive to match the speed of a chemical drive. By the time it gets truly going the chemical drive ship would have reached its destination already, like Mars, for example- ion is okay for long range unmanned missions like deep space 1. Plus ion drives cannot launch from the ground, they have to be launched into space via chemical thrusters first. This em drive (assuming it even works) has the same limitation.
 
PoS said:
It takes a long time for an ion drive to match the speed of a chemical drive. By the time it gets truly going the chemical drive ship would have reached its destination already, like Mars, for example- ion is okay for long range unmanned missions like deep space 1. Plus ion drives cannot launch from the ground, they have to be launched into space via chemical thrusters first. This em drive (assuming it even works) has the same limitation.
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Not really the point. Putting an ion drive against a chemical rocket in a race on interplanetary scales the ion drive will win because the chemical rocket will have an hour or so to apply maximum thrust while the ion drive will apply thrust for as long as you want.

The top speed of an ion driven spacecraft is around 200,000 mph, to the chemical rocket's 20,000 mph.

The maximum speed of a spaceship is almost entirely dependent on the speed of the propellant, the efficiency of the propellant and the length of burn. Chemical burn technology is severely limited by this as they have a short burn, 35% efficiency, and a relatively slow propellant speed. Ion drives are 90% efficient, a very long burn time and a very fast propellant speed.
 
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sanman said:
There's a proper and sensible way to do things - and when you have claims of some fundamental new physics, then the only way to validate them is through science labs that specialize in Fundamental Research, whether university labs or even the National Laboratories (Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Argonne, Lawrence Livermore, etc).

NASA may have good engineers and astrophysicists, but they're not specialized for validating Fundamental Physics. Other outfits are better suited to this task, and nobody should take hyped claims at face value.

Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Proof.
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I'm more of a pragmatist. See if it really works, then figure out how.


Scale one up a bit, stick it in orbit, turn it on. If it changes orbit, it has thrust.

QED
 
jmotivator said:
Not really the point. Putting an ion drive against a chemical rocket in a race on interplanetary scales the ion drive will win because the chemical rocket will have an hour or so to apply maximum thrust while the ion drive will apply thrust for as long as you want.

The top speed of an ion driven spacecraft is around 200,000 mph, to the chemical rocket's 20,000 mph.

The maximum speed of a spaceship is almost entirely dependent on the speed of the propellant, the efficiency of the propellant and the length of burn. Chemical burn technology is severely limited by this as they have a short burn, 35% efficiency, and a relatively slow propellant speed. Ion drives are 90% efficient, a very long burn time and a very fast propellant speed.
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Look, no one is denying that ion drive's delta-v will surpass current chemical drives eventually, but its acceleration is so minuscule that it takes a long time to get it going. And if you decelerate with an ion drive, you have to star all over again. Ion drives are best used with xenon, which is a pretty rare propellant too. Its not all about delta-v and fuel consumption, practicality and acceleration makes a huge difference too. A chemical drive can lift off from a planet, while an ion drive's thrust to weight ratio is too weak for it to go anywhere while sitting on a launch pad. So if you want to go to another planet and you have one rocket, which drive do you use?
 
PoS said:
Look, no one is denying that ion drive's delta-v will surpass current chemical drives eventually, but its acceleration is so minuscule that it takes a long time to get it going. And if you decelerate with an ion drive, you have to star all over again. Ion drives are best used with xenon, which is a pretty rare propellant too. Its not all about delta-v and fuel consumption, practicality and acceleration makes a huge difference too. A chemical drive can lift off from a planet, while an ion drive's thrust to weight ratio is too weak for it to go anywhere while sitting on a launch pad. So if you want to go to another planet and you have one rocket, which drive do you use?
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According to NASA? Ion Drive.
 
Goshin said:
I'm more of a pragmatist. See if it really works, then figure out how.

Scale one up a bit, stick it in orbit, turn it on. If it changes orbit, it has thrust.

QED
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The most interesting thing abouy this drive, if it works, is that it wouldn't follow the laws of propulsion as we know it. Since there would be no expulsion of propellant, there is no propellant speed needed for calculating top theoretical speed. If this drive is tugging it's way forward on the fabric of space-time (for lack of a better analogy) then there is no real top theoretical speed. Or, at least, not one we know how to calculate.
 
PoS said:
Look, no one is denying that ion drive's delta-v will surpass current chemical drives eventually, but its acceleration is so minuscule that it takes a long time to get it going. And if you decelerate with an ion drive, you have to star all over again. Ion drives are best used with xenon, which is a pretty rare propellant too. Its not all about delta-v and fuel consumption, practicality and acceleration makes a huge difference too. A chemical drive can lift off from a planet, while an ion drive's thrust to weight ratio is too weak for it to go anywhere while sitting on a launch pad. So if you want to go to another planet and you have one rocket, which drive do you use?
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Again, thrust is meaningless without knowing burn time.

Here is a nice graphical demonstration of how ion drive destroys conventional rocket propulsion.

The example uses the same mass of fuel for both craft, so the rocket reaches 3000kps before burn out, but even at maximum rocket speed of 38,000 mph the ion drive would pass the rocket before reaching Mars.
 
PoS said:
OK, let me know when one of their ion drives lifts off from the launchpad.
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Moving the goal posts. I never compared rocket propulsion to Ion propulsion for orbital launches. But for SPACE EXPLORATION ion drive is superior because it is far more efficient and far faster. The EM drive, if it proves out, will be even more efficient and even faster. Refueling a chemical rocket in orbit, as you suggest, wouldn't be better than ion pulse for many physical and logistical reasons.

Really the only space exploration for which chemical propulsion makes sense over ion drive is for trips to the moon.
 
PoS said:
OK, let me know when one of their ion drives lifts off from the launchpad.
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Totally missing the point... that isn't the standard in deep space travel. It is about final velocity over a relatively long period of time. Low thrust/long burn wins that one.



Nobody is saying we can launch from ground with ion or em. Just that once we're in orbit, ion or em have potentially huge advantages in going to Mars or beyond.
 
PoS said:
Look, no one is denying that ion drive's delta-v will surpass current chemical drives eventually, but its acceleration is so minuscule that it takes a long time to get it going. And if you decelerate with an ion drive, you have to star all over again. Ion drives are best used with xenon, which is a pretty rare propellant too. Its not all about delta-v and fuel consumption, practicality and acceleration makes a huge difference too. A chemical drive can lift off from a planet, while an ion drive's thrust to weight ratio is too weak for it to go anywhere while sitting on a launch pad. So if you want to go to another planet and you have one rocket, which drive do you use?
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...both.
 
jmotivator said:
Moving the goal posts. I never compared rocket propulsion to Ion propulsion for orbital launches. But for SPACE EXPLORATION ion drive is superior because it is far more efficient and far faster. The EM drive, if it proves out, will be even more efficient and even faster. Refueling a chemical rocket in orbit, as you suggest, wouldn't be better than ion pulse for many physical and logistical reasons.

Really the only space exploration for which chemical propulsion makes sense over ion drive is for trips to the moon.
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Unmanned space exploration would be suitable for ion drives, but not for manned missions. We need multi-purpose craft that can land and take off again. Orbital transfer maneuvers can add delta-v to chemical drives, though I would choose NERVA over them for long ranged travel.

Goshin said:
Totally missing the point... that isn't the standard in deep space travel. It is about final velocity over a relatively long period of time. Low thrust/long burn wins that one.



Nobody is saying we can launch from ground with ion or em. Just that once we're in orbit, ion or em have potentially huge advantages in going to Mars or beyond.
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And youre still missing my point. Ion drives takes a long time to accelerate. Chemical drives combined with orbital transfers will get us to Mars within 60 days or less, land and refuel ISRU, then take off again. Ion driven craft can't do that.

Deuce said:
...both.
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I'd prefer chemical for liftoffs and NERVA for interplanetary travel.
 
Goshin said:
I'm more of a pragmatist. See if it really works, then figure out how.


Scale one up a bit, stick it in orbit, turn it on. If it changes orbit, it has thrust.

QED
Click to expand...

Fundamental Research labs - Los Alamos, Argonne, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, etc - have the capability to verify what's fundamentally going on. They know how to set up rigorous experiments, to quantify the and analyze the results. Even if it's not immediately possible to tell what's behind an effect, they'll be able to tell whether an effect is actually there, or if it's bogus.
 
jmotivator said:
The most interesting thing abouy this drive, if it works, is that it wouldn't follow the laws of propulsion as we know it. Since there would be no expulsion of propellant, there is no propellant speed needed for calculating top theoretical speed. If this drive is tugging it's way forward on the fabric of space-time (for lack of a better analogy) then there is no real top theoretical speed. Or, at least, not one we know how to calculate.
Click to expand...

Yep. All the rules of physics just went out of the window even though they work so well.

The last time this happened was the trouble with the orbit of Mercury which seemed to not quite comply to Newton's laws. Thus we got, eventually, special relativity. And thus all the wonders of the atomic age.

Look out galaxy, we might be coming for you soon.

Given the lack of any sort of theoretical basis for how this thing works how did we come up with it??? Reverse engineered from a UFO???
 
Non linear drive? i don't know what that means, but i do understand 'chain reactions.' if i was to build this engine, and use no fuels, then i would have to say that the best way to do this would be to have one spark create more sparks without needing to be 'poked.'

This would be possible with gases around the space ship, except that most of it is nitrogen, and, will not spark. of course, as there are many other types of gases out there, like helium or some rubbish, they will all burn, yes?

So, the engine should be outside the craft, like a typical passenger jet, where it may spark and see the fruits realized.
 
sanman said:
Fundamental Research labs - Los Alamos, Argonne, Oak Ridge, Lawrence Livermore, etc - have the capability to verify what's fundamentally going on. They know how to set up rigorous experiments, to quantify the and analyze the results. Even if it's not immediately possible to tell what's behind an effect, they'll be able to tell whether an effect is actually there, or if it's bogus.
Click to expand...


I favor a pragmatic test for one important reason... many scientists are reluctant to admit the elephant in the room actually exists, if currently accepted theory says he does not.
 
I think scientists have often stated that hyperspace travel is more reasonable than warp drive.
simply because it can be easier to distort space than it is to move faster than the speed of light.

while this drive wouldn't be used to escape a planet once you are in space it would very capable
of moving.

I really hope this pans out to work.

you know people thought rail guns were a thing of sci fi a few years ago now they are a reality.
there is no reason that this can't be the same thing.

same goes with fusion reactors and now there is a working on being built.
still has a way to go but their firsts tests went very well.
 
PoS said:
I'd prefer chemical for liftoffs and NERVA for interplanetary travel.
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Ok, so why did you make it this weird one or the other question?

Ion drives have a high efficiency that is useful for certain applications.
 
Another item on the large pile of ideas I don't understand but which give me hope.
 
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